The Assassination of Trust
by urbankazoos
Summary: Follow-up to "The Dennison House." In the aftermath of a twisted betrayal, Spencer seeks her revenge...in the form of Ashley Davies' dead body.
1. Chapter 1

_Follow-up to The Dennison House. If you haven't read it, go there first. Alright, guys...enjoy!_

**Chapter 1:  
**

~~~~All the old knives That have rusted in my back, I drive in yours.  
Author: Phaedrus (Thrace of Macedonia)~~~~~

The rope of smoke coming from the tip of my cigarette filled the air with a kind of fatal mysticism. The potential of disease behind the closed curtains, smoke, and mirrors. A sort of creeping, yet obvious disease that I had become accustomed to these days. I've been smoking for four months now. One hundred and fifteen days to be exact.

I suppose that means that I'm a "smoker." It sounds professional. As if somehow I could fill my "nine-to-five" putting tiny cylinders that come with the promise of death to my lips and call it a career.

I know what you're thinking. And yes, I had put tiny cylinders to my lips before and called it a career. Sex and death aren't that different after all. But that was the past. I'm very different now.

She made me this way.

So as the smoke curls into the heavy air, dancing its seductive dance in the wind, I sit waiting. The splintered picnic table that I chose to call a temporary home reminded me constantly of this fact. I was in the middle of the desert—reds and oranges and strange purples that surround me like the stereotypical, classroom watercolor of a five year-old and the cloudy visions of a carnival psychic. I could only assume it was someone's cruel idea of a joke to place a picnic table on a mound of dirt across the highway from a gas station and a restaurant that looked as though it had been closed since prohibition.

I wasn't laughing.

But maybe my lack of laughter stemmed from that fact that I saw the car and knew it was her. A flaunting, garish vehicle announcing its presence with the insistent boom and pulse of looping bass. She saw me staring and pulled over so that the car sat several feet away from my own, landing in a cloud of hot, impermanent earth. The music stopped, her door opened, and then all I saw was a smile I hadn't exactly missed and a person I didn't exactly trust. But I had no other options.

I had to start from the beginning.

"Spencer," she says, walking towards me.

I could prepare myself for the disingenuous hug and the flowery perfume, but could never be ready for the memories that came flooding back at almost biblical proportions.

"Madison."

"You look good," she says with an approving nod.

We're women, after all, and that means I had lost an obvious amount of weight. She was right. Eating had become a nagging wife, a pleading parent, an embarrassing habit. It was hard to eat and feed a body that I wasn't so sure I wanted anymore. It was hard to sustain a life that I no longer felt I deserved.

"So do you," I say, attempting a smile, "should we sit down?"

She looks concerned as she spots the picnic table behind me, "Ok."

It's the strangest thing to see Madison—in her desperate flair and insincere pretention—sitting on that dark, damaged bench. I imagined it was comparable to seeing a flamingo hunting in camouflage or an Olympic-size pool in the middle of the jungle.

"I'm sorry about what happened," she says, uncomfortably. And suddenly it's no longer about flamingos or pools.

It's about Ashley.

"Are you?"

"Look, I know that you probably don't trust a lot of people right now. And I know you don't have a reason to trust anyone from that house—including me. But no one told me what the outcome would be. I didn't know they were going to…"

"What did they tell you then?"

"Not a lot."

I try to laugh, but I only sound bitter and pained, "Not a lot. That doesn't do me a lot of good, does it?"

"All I know for sure is that Aiden tracked you down on purpose…offered you a place in the house…he said that I could benefit from keeping quiet."

"I don't know if you remember this or not, Madison, but I asked you when I first arrived what was different about them—Ashley and Kyla. I asked you why they got to stay in the house even though Aiden moved girls in and out of there all the time. You said something about them having golden pussies…"

She laughs, "I remember."

"I'll assume you were just playing it cool…because I've been down there, Maddie, and I can assure it's not made of gold. Fool's gold maybe, but not gold."

She shrugs, "I couldn't tell you anything. Aiden made me promise to stay quiet and I needed that job. I needed the money. To be honest with you now, Spencer, I still can't say much."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I felt bad, I guess. I _feel_ bad…guilty somehow."

"Are you still in the business, or what?" I ask, lighting a new cigarette.

"I still see a couple clients, but I don't live in the house anymore if that's what you mean."

"I don't know what I meant by that…because I don't even really care."

"Spencer, I'm sorry."

"You've said that already."

"I know."

"Is one of those 'couple clients' the guy I gave you?"

"What?"

"Is one of the guys you're still sleeping with the client I gave you to make you stop seeing my father?"

"I never slept with your father, I promise."

"Please just answer the question."

"Yes, he's one of them."

"How nice for you. That was part of it then? Lying so you could get my best client? That's fucking rich, Madison."

"I never said I had morals or anything."

This time my laugh sounded more sincere, "That's the understatement of the fucking year! Are you kidding me? Morals? I've seen more morals on the Vegas strip."

"You're not an angel either," she says, allowing that guilt she supposedly feels to subside long enough to defend an impossibly moral position. Her ability to go back and forth might benefit her in a private room with a john, but it would do her no good out here in the desert with me.

I wasn't paying and I went in knowing full well that satisfaction wouldn't be at the end of this meeting.

"Trust me, I know," I say, flicking ash onto the desert floor, "I used to pretend that no matter how many clients or how many blowjobs I gave just to earn a quick buck, I was still a good person. I still had a good heart."

"What about now?"

"Now I know that having a good heart isn't any better than having no heart at all. In the end, everyone fucks you. They fuck you from in front, they fuck you from behind, they fuck you with your permission, they fuck you without it…they fuck you over. Either way, you get positively fucked. Isn't that right?"

"Don't let them break you, Spencer. Aiden and Ashley aren't even close to being worth it."

"They were worth it for you, weren't they?"

She lowers her eyes, saying nothing.

I don't need her to say anything. I don't need her words. What I need now are Aiden's words…Ashley's words. And she has them.

"I need to know more Madison. This is my brother's child we're talking about. This is beyond who can turn the most tricks, ok? This is my family."

"I wish that…"

"Don't tell me what you wish you could do. Just tell me what I need to know."

"I can't."

"You can't?"

"They'll kill me."

"And I won't?"

She shrugs, "Fine. Do it. Kill me."

I smile, appreciating her attempt at valiance when we both knew she would cling to her lousy life until the moment it slipped away like hot, easy sin. Luckily for her and her remaining clients, all of my bullets had predestinations. They were all meant for the cold, lying bodies of Aiden Dennison and Ashley Davies—if those were in fact, their real names.

"Tell me what you can then. Tell me anything."

"I know that they're on their way to New York. Someone has a house there or maybe somewhere near there. I don't know. But if you find them, Spencer, please don't…"

"I won't tell them I saw you."

"Thank you."

"What about Kyla?"

"I can't say for sure."

"You both knew the entire time what they had planned for me…but did Kyla have a role in…"

"I have no idea."

"She changed her number."

"I know."

"You have the new one?" I asked, though it was a question with an obvious answer.

She sighed, growing restless in the desert heat, "Yeah, but she would know."

Yes, my bullets were meant for the happy couple in New York—or near there—but I had other weapons as well. Weapons that could be Madison's latest accessories at a moment's notice.

"Madison, they have my niece. If that means leaving you here with more holes than you came here with, that would simply be an unfortunate roadblock on the way to getting him back."

"Call from a pay phone or else she'll know it's you. She'll know anyway, but…" she trailed off as she scrolled through her cell phone looking for Kyla's number, "Here. But Spencer, this is it. I can't give you anything else."

"That's all I need."

"You know where she is?"

"Why do you think I'm sitting here right now?"

"How did you find out?"

I shake my head, "I can't say."

"Fair enough."

We sit a moment more, staring out at the winding highway. One way takes you back to L.A. The other into Arizona.

"Well, this has been nice…" I say, anxious to get on the road.

"What are you going to do them?"

"Who?" I ask with a knowing smile.

"All of them…Kyla, Aiden…Ashley."

"Oh, well I hadn't given it much thought. But I suppose I'll torture and kill them. That seems like the fastest method of compromise. And when they call you—which I know they will—you can tell them that."

"I'll tell them you tried to see me, but I said no. I owe you at least that, I guess. I mean, _at least_."

"We don't owe each other anything anymore, but thank you."

She nods, flashing a quick smile that reminds me of what I thought was a more simpler time. I watch her walk towards her car, before I make my way towards mine, listening to the roar of her expensive German engineering. But before she sped away, she pulled up next to me, looking me dead in the eye.

"He's lied to her about you, you know. Just be careful what you believe. And remember everything, Spencer. Everything she said to you," she says with uncharacteristic conviction, "Everything."


	2. Chapter 2

love ya, guys...sorry for the errors in this last chapter. i never edited...oh well. no editing=faster chapter output. however, no editing can sometimes equal shitty chapters. hmm...

-----------------------------

**Chapter 2:**

"_Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it."-Doug Horton._

_---------------  
_

I know she knows. My intuition is pummeling static sensation all throughout my body in the form of wicked anxiety. I can't breathe sometimes just waiting for her to suddenly be right there.

Right there.

And I know she's on her way. The air and I share much in common as we wait still and cold for her to break us of our temporary stasis. The hair on my skin bristled at every eager gust of wind, a terrible reverence every time I thought of all the things I deserved from her riled consequence. Because there's nothing worse—nothing—than the expectancy of the hell you are to pay and being fully aware that you deserve it.

I played my role, I know. Ashley, Aiden, Madison, myself, others…we all played a pivotal role in destroying Spencer Carlin. We all played our part in the subtle destruction of her life. Her entire family our discarded puppets. Her childhood home our ridiculous playground.

God, I can't believe I played my part.

But there were things I needed. My whole life had been a sad quest for the things she had. A father.

An intimidating dose of confidence.

Money.

Aiden.

When the day came I was standing over my kitchen sink, watching the driveway from the tiny window. Over the contrived row of plants and my new herb garden, she stood through the glass. She was in no apparent hurry as she smoked a long cigarette in the yard, her face calm, her outfit casual. I don't know what I had expected. A yellow and black jumpsuit? An angry scowl? An axe and a promise?

No.

No, I should've known better. She had tracked me down for months, after all. Why waste the opportunity to make me suffer for her immense pain with over-the-top acrobatics and grisly violence?

She simply smoked that cigarette and looked out into the colorful distance. Perhaps she was thinking about the past. Perhaps she saw the shaky outline of The Dennison House in that shifting horizon and used it as her inspiration. Perhaps she saw my face and thought about the last time we met eyes. If that was her last thought before ringing my bell, I was taking my last breaths for sure. I swallowed nervously. The bell jarred my senses again and again, sounding dramatically like a final symphony of historic sound.

I walked slowly to the door, counting each foot step. Feeling each breath as it left my quivering lips. I had never been a religious person, but my brain was rattling with every sent prayer. Never had I felt so helpless. And if I thought of every blow I deserved, every puncture wound, every shot…

"Spencer."

I waited for the ringing of bells to be replaced by the ringing of gunshots. But there was silence. Just her steely smile and emotionless eyes roaming my shivering body.

"You can come in," I say quickly, stepping aside to make room for her thin form.

"Thank you," she replies, softly.

Seeing her in my purposely modest home seemed inevitable. She eyed everything like a seasoned investigator. Those arctic blue eyes locked longest on my framed photos. She swallowed visibly when she recognized the deceptive smile of my sister and the grin of her newly-acquired daughter.

I can't believe I forgot to turn it over. How stupid had fear made me?

"Where are they?" she asks behind gritted teeth.

"I can't tell you that, Spencer."

"She's taking fucking family portraits with my niece, Kyla."

"I know, and I'm sorry you had to see that."

"Is Aiden with them?"

I shook my head. I was a few moments away from death and all for my confused sister. If there are favors given in the afterlife, she owed me beyond the grave and in the fiery depths of the hell we were both bound for.

"What can you tell me? What the fuck is your disgusting life worth to me?"

"Not much."

"Who's in New York?"

"No one's in New York."

The truth, whether she believed it or not.

"Who's near New York?"

I said nothing.

"Connecticut? Pennsylvania? Massachusetts?" she asked, counting off states on her fingers.

"One of those, maybe."

The truths were slipping out from between my lips like the annoying weeping of a broken faucet. I had to stop before I jeopardized everything.

"Did you ever fuck for money or was it part of the plan?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"A valid one."

Her investigative spirit was in full-blown attack. She had thought through every question. She had analyzed every possibility. My startled conversation was running over with clues despite my best efforts.

"No," I whispered.

"What?"

"No, I never did."

"How did you make money then? How are you paying for this place?"

"Aiden."

She laughs, "Really? Are you serious right now?"

"I'm serious. He offered me the chance to move and I took it…obviously. I couldn't stay behind after they left and let you come and find me. I mean…you're here to kill me, right? This is it?"

My body shook a melancholy rhythm. I was scared. There was no way around it. I felt like saying it all, letting every secret flow from me like a raging body of water. These are the things you want before death. You want to be free of everything you kept to yourself. You want to leave as you came—with nothing left behind, and nothing spared.

"Who said anything about murder?" she asks with a shrug, "what right would I have to murder you?"

"I don't know. _Every_ right?"

"Oh yeah, ok…you're absolutely correct, aren't you? I do have every fucking right."

Suddenly an intense silver gleam draws my eyes to her waistband where a knife rests against her skin. Puncture wounds, indeed.

"I wish that everything had been different, Spence. I wish I hadn't gotten myself involved in this. But look, she had my money…the trust fund from our father and I had nothing! I had nothing!" I screamed, feeling the tears pour from my undeserving eyes, "and I had never worked hard for anything in my life. I didn't even know where to start. Then there was this elaborate plan to get her daughter back and…and I had my chance. All I had to do was live in that house and watch your every move. Report back to them at the end of the day. I gave you every warning I could. I told you to be careful, but you wouldn't listen! You were falling for her and…that was it. And no, they hadn't counted on it, but certainly it made things a lot easier. Certainly they had you blinded beyond what anyone could've expected going in and then…then the rest was…"

"Shut up. Just stop…stop talking," she said, covering her ears.

The act looked ridiculous. There she was, an adult woman with a blade resting in the band of her jeans and she stood like an innocent child in the middle of a tantrum. But it worked, because I shut my mouth and paced nervously around my small living room, waiting for her to resume our conversation. I knew it wasn't my place to continue. I was living on borrowed time as it was.

"So you watched me? Were there cameras or what? How invasive did this plan become?"

"Nothing like that. I just watched to see if you were in your room. Sometimes I listened to your conversations with your brother. Our rooms were close, you know."

"The Dennison House was real. I mean, there were other girls who had lived there and traded sex for money, right? Or was that part of the plan as well?"

"No, it was real. You and Madison were both…and there had been girls there before, yes. Aiden's business of hooking up girls with the wealthy was very, very real."

"But Ashley?"

"A long time ago. But not while you lived there. Most times it was just Aiden in the room with her."

"Great. Fucking great."

"I'm sorry, but that's just the way it was. There was a lot of lying going on…but you know that already."

"One last question before…"

I felt a sudden jolt of fear shake my fragile heart, "What is it?"

"Maybe two. Maybe I have two questions."

"Two it is."

"Why did you call me that day? The day they took her…why did you call?"

I shook my head, tears falling to the hardwood floor, "There was a part of me that needed you to know. I'm not saying it was noble, but it was the best part of me at that moment and I just had to let you know at least a little bit of what was going on. I didn't want you to go crazy with worry."

"How sweet."

"Like I said, I'm not saying it was noble."

"Yeah, well…"

Her eyes looked around the room again, stopping at the picture of Ashley and Maggie just like before. But this time, her face was soft. I imagine it was hard not to reminisce about a time that never happened, when that was going to be her family. Dysfunctional and strange, just like any other family. But taken and foreign just like the cruelest dream of an unsuspecting party. I wanted to cry for her. And selfishly, I wanted to cry for myself one last time.

"Second question?" I asked between sobs.

My ending was near. My book written. How could I fight it?

She walked over to the front door, locking it with the simple chain. This move would certainly slow me down if I decided to run.

"Your sister—the fucking inhuman bitch that she is—did she ever…did she ever say that maybe she…was any of it real? Between us. Was any of it real or…"

"Did she love you, you mean?"

"Not even love necessarily, but any moment, any second of it, did she mean it at all?"

"Believe me when I say this, Spencer," I say, wiping my eyes and preparing myself for whatever was coming, "but I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't."

"I'm sorry too, Kyla," she replies with a nod, smiling as though she suddenly pitied me, "I'm sorry too."


	3. Chapter 3

**chapter 3:**

---------------------------------

"_Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes."_-_Unknown._

_----------------------------------  
_

This is not a tour. This is no road trip, nor any other sort of preferable expedition. No atlas games. No souvenirs. Though, there was something to be relished as I sped across the country with the whisper of focused thought as my radio, echoing in the hallways of my once-scattered mind.

Her bound hands as my confirmation of what was at stake.

This was no dream. No ethereal visit from the land of incomparable reality. This was my reality as it was, bound and personified. Impossible yet actual.

My head ached at night—especially on the road—and there was no medication besides answers and optimistic conclusions that could cure it. I tried anyway, popping pills dangerously. Chasing them down with bottled coffee and more pills. It was incredible that I could manage the driving at all.

But then there were those hands.

The months after Ashley abducted my niece were nearly impossible. I spent most days in my childhood room listening to muffled conversations and percolating coffee. My brother rented out his house and moved back in as well. He was an absolute wreck of a once-imperishable man. It was the strangest of circumstances that finally brought us all together again—damaged, scarred versions of our younger selves in a house that had at one time promised us safety and comfort.

I'll never forgive her for those months.

I'll never forgive her at all.

"How much further before we stop for the night?" she asks, staring out through the cloudy, dirt-specked window.

"I don't know."

We were of few words, Kyla and I. What was there to say, really? She was a hostage. I kidnapped her, just as her sister had kidnapped my niece, but the acts were beyond comparable. Kyla was far from innocence and I was far from feeling parental as I listened to the sounds of fabric rubbing as she adjusted her wrists behind her back.

It wasn't about her, of course. It was about the knowledge she had, the job she had agreed to do, the orders she was given, the conversations she had heard and been apart of despite her new-found guilt. She was in contact with Ashley. If I had Kyla, I was a million steps further than I could be alone. If Ashley had something of my brother's, then certainly it was only fair I had something of hers as well.

"This rope still hurts."

"Where is Ashley?"

"I can't say…you know I can't."

"Then I imagine you'll grow used to the rope."

And I worried. Yes, I worried at the reflection I saw in hotel mirrors. I was worried that I no longer knew myself. I was worried that if I changed…if I became damaged by their cruelty, I had lost more than my niece. I had lost myself. But there wasn't enough time in the day, enough hours on the road, enough hostages to take for this to be about me. This was about Madeline. This was about Ashley. And the ties wrapped around a brunette's wrists as she struggled beneath the roof of my car—it symbolically linked them both.

"They'll know. The second she calls me and she hears it in my voice, she'll know you're near."

"That's what everyone fails to understand, Kyla. I want her to know I'm near. I want her to know I have you with me under duress and I want her to know she underestimated me. These things don't bother me. They fuel me."

So they did. The idea of Ashley being washed over with the realization that she had mistaken my love as weakness shivered me to my core with an unhealthy dose of absurd pleasure. My pleasure was rare these days. I toasted many plastic hotel cups filled with cold soda to the phrase "take it where you can get it" and thought often of Ashley's face as she saw me before her after all these months. Like I said, these things fueled me. Her displeasure my only pleasure.

"Tell me about Aiden."

"What about him?"

"Anything. Anything at all."

"It won't help you, but fine," she said, adjusting uncomfortably in the passenger's seat, "he's a smart guy."

"Is he?"

"You should know better than most."

I was no longer a person whose presence filled her with guilt. I was no longer worth gentle words and soft apologies. Because now I was the nameless, faceless enemy that had her against her will. She only felt at ease knowing death was coming. She liked the panic, the drama of last moments, the cold sweat that crept and landed at the base of her neck. There was a heroic beauty in being murdered by the woman she had fooled. There was nothing heroic about being kidnapped and driven across America's highways bound in rope and buckled in.

"I should, shouldn't I?" I say with a smile she can't see, "maybe you should tell me anyway."

"He's rich, good-looking, smart…he knows what he wants and he goes for it."

"This I know."

"Yeah, well…I told you."

"He's also a rapist, Kyla. In case you had forgotten in your haste to wipe the slate clean and start anew in hot suburbia."

"I knew that I couldn't forget, ok? I never forgot about you and what happened. I thought about it all the time actually. And when either of them would call, it only reminded me of what happened in that house."

"But you take money from him. You survive on the money he gives you in exchange for your part in all this. You feel bad, but not bad enough to turn down the coin. I see."

"I guess I reasoned it away by telling myself that if I didn't take the money…if I saw no benefit…then it really was all in vain. I commit the biggest sin of my life, only to walk away with nothing to show from it? No…" she says, shaking her head.

"Perhaps those are the moments when you should've called me and told me where my niece was. Maybe that could've been your benefit. Fucking up, but fixing it!"

"I see that now, ok? But I was scared. And now I know why."

She was crying again, but I didn't care. What did tears mean to me now? The roadkill of emotional expression. I had cried so many myself, with no one there to listen minus the presence of a God I was furious with and a row of pictures displaying my new purpose.

"You've been raped, haven't you?" I asked her, disregarding her pointless sobs.

"What?"

"When I first entered the house, you explained to me the importance of it…the importance of not being anonymous. I told you that I had never felt like that out on the street and you told me you had been raped. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you were telling the truth. And now that I know you were never a whore, I assume these weren't strangers. You knew these guys?"

"One of them, yes."

"Well then you know how it feels. You know what it's like to trust someone and have him violate you in the cruelest way possible."

"What's your point?"

"I don't have one."

"You're lying."

"I learned from the best."

"No one knew Aiden was going to rape you, ok? That wasn't my little way of letting you know that it was going to happen. There were no context clues."

"I see."

"You can be paranoid about everything if you want, but it's not going to help you, Spencer. I know you think everything was a lie. And yeah, a lot of it was. But not all of it."

"Which parts weren't?"

"I want this rope off…then I'll tell you."

"I enjoy the fact that you're willing to negotiate. I find it amusing—which is nice out here on the open road where things tend to get a little boring. A little monotonous. But no, there are no compromises to be made here. You're the hostage. You don't get to bargain."

"Fine, then I'm not talking anymore."

It wasn't easy, but I managed to pull out the Stiletto knife that was warming my pocket and have its sharp point at her neck in a matter of seconds. My left hand remained on the cold, leather wheel. My eyes on the dark road.

"Let's try again," I said, pressuring the point a bit. Enough to make her whine in pain.

"You're not going to kill me…please say you're not going to kill me. Not like this."

"I don't have to kill you. But there's nothing in the handbook of how to take a hostage that says I have to deliver you in the shape in which you were taken. That's something I don't have to do. That being said, I suggest you speak."

It took her several moments to compose herself. She tapped the floorboard nervously with her feet, despite the fact that her ankles were bound in an unnecessary amount of white rope.

Further pressure on the knife sped up the process significantly.

"Ashley doesn't love him. One of the things that remained the same throughout it all was the fact that she was trying to get away from him."

"He picked them up at the park."

"So? That doesn't mean she loves the guy. It doesn't even mean she's with him now."

"You said she wasn't."

"I thought you were about to kill me. I don't even remember a lot of what I said."

The effort being extended _not_ to kill her was growing by the second. Luckily, my psychosis was reserved for a lying duo. Not their fumbling accomplices.

"So she was using him too?"

"To a certain extent. They used each other. He got something out of it. She got something out of it. Madison and I both got something out of it. The whole idea was to make it work for everybody…well, except for you."

"I noticed."

"And yeah, there might have been someone else that benefited as well…someone close to Ashley."

The thought of there being key players I wasn't aware of had never crossed my mind. I was prepared to handle four. How many were there instead? How many people lined the road to Ashley Davies?

"Do I know him?"

Kyla actually smiled, and unbeknownst to her, its strangeness scared me. Never before had I been a witness to the visual image next to me. A woman bound in rope—helpless and vulnerable, knife at throat—smiling like a pleased child.

I repeated my question, careful not to betray my power with a tone of fear, "Do I know him or what?"

She continued that unnerving smile as she answered, "No, no. I don't think you do," she said casually, stilling her feet, "unless you know Rebecca."

I sent it through the database, but the name didn't bear any familiarity.

"No, I don't know her. Who is she?"

She wrung as much pleasure possible out of answering, "Rebecca…Aiden's wife."

And just like that, the pieces of the puzzle were once again in humiliating disarray.


	4. Chapter 4

_Enjoy, guys! And thanks for the feedback. It's quite lovely._

**CHAPTER 4:**

"I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself."-Walter Anderson

-----------------------------

That fucking bitch.

How dare she dismantle my life with her displaced trust and ridiculous assumptions. And now where was she? Where was she to sort through the mess she had created?

Spencer.

She had never learned.

I shouldn't blame her. But most nights, as I lay awake clutching my pillow and wishing it was the one thing in the world I had done right, I do. Madeline was everything I couldn't be, the reflection of the best parts of myself so unbelievable it was as though she took on prism-like perfection and untouchable innocence in the light of my eyes. And to her, I was invincible simply because I was hers. Her naiveté allowed her such an emotional privilege. She had never known loss. She had never known the fear that's sparked by sudden reality as long as she was under my constant, vigilant gaze. I had sheltered her, yes. But now my gaze only connected with the uniformed men of the local police department, miniature bottles of scotch, and a worn, tear-stained photograph of her.

I blame her. God help me but I can't help but blame her.

I felt like a failure and a fraud, sitting alone in a youthful, blue room, waiting for mistakes to be realized. Waiting for Madeline to be returned to the moment that was stolen from me and yet etched in my unfortunate memory, illuminated by the liquids I ironically swallowed in order to forget. I waited for something…a moment I was starting to lose hope of ever seeing realized.

How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so blind?

Maybe I'm still blind. Maybe I've blinded myself to all the signs. Maybe if I could stop the drinking, stop sleeping just to see visions of her, stop being such an absolute fucking coward, I could chase the clues and arrive at a door with her behind it. Waiting for a father that she saw as perfect. Waiting for the fraud that I had always been, hiding away every part of myself that wasn't someone worth her adoration.

Ashley and I were never in love. There were no promises. Just casual nights and awkward days for a few easy months. It was supposed to be simple. But everything meant to be simple grows complicated, and soon I was looking at the curved, smooth belly where my daughter was growing in terrified awe. She wanted to keep her. I wanted to be done with the entire situation. I wanted to be done.

I blamed her.

Some things never change.

I prepared myself for her permanence in my life No abortion meant Ashley Davies indefinitely. For a short time, I wrestled with the idea of making our union legit. But that wasn't what she was after.

There was someone else all along.

But I have to tell you, the second…no, the _instant_ I saw my daughter for the first time, everything shifted into place. There was no one else in the room. No one else in the world. And when I held her in my unworthy arms, I felt a euphoric responsibility that can never be explained in words. I can't even explain it to myself, really. But the absence of that presence—the presence that brought my life into hurried focus that day in the hospital—is so agonizing, so heartbreaking…that I'm literally brought to my knees at every thought, every memory of that loss.

I used to be a brother. I used to be the brother to a naïve, typical girl with a head-full of blonde hair and a heart that was open to everything non-discriminately. She brought home strays. She always did. Dogs, cats, turtles…people. It was only a matter of time before one of those strays turned on her, and this time it was the one we shared—Ashley Davies.

I used to be a brother to a sister who listened to me, trusted me, depended on me. And that brother could've warned her. That brother could've saved his family from the rubble that he knew Ashley could leave in her wake. But he was gone. His daughter was gone. His sister was gone.

"Glen?"

"Yeah, mom?"

She stood at the doorway, her face showing nothing but concern. These days she talked to me like I was a child. A child she was somehow frightened of, yet had to deal with nonetheless. And maybe she was right. Maybe this is what I had been reduced to in the absence of my daughter.

"I'm doing laundry. Is there anything I can wash for you?"

"No, mom. Thanks, though."

"You've got to leave this room, Glen. You can take a walk, maybe."

"I don't want to take a walk."

"Glen…"

"Mom, please. I appreciate it, ok? I really do. But a walk's not going to help. Nothing is going to help right now."

"It's been months. I'm not asking you to be ok, but certainly you can try to make the circumstances tolerable. Because Madeline isn't hiding at the bottom of a bottle, Glen."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"I'm not sure if you do or not. But your sister is out there looking. Your father and I are calling the police station everyday just to find out if they've heard or found anything. And meanwhile you stay up here getting drunk. That doesn't help anything, does it?"

"Mom, look, I know Ashley. And the police aren't going to find her. Whoever she's with, whatever she's doing…they're just not going to find her. My daughter is gone. What can I do? Be like my fucking sister and chase her across the country like this is some kind of goddamn Lifetime movie?"

"She feels guilty. She's doing whatever she can to make this right."

"She's doing whatever she can to make herself feel better. Has she explained any of this to you? I mean, do we even know how they met? Do we know where she's been for the past few years? No. No, we don't know anything about Spencer at all. But I bet if we did, we would have some answers as to where Madeline is. I can pretty much guarantee you of that."

"It's none of our business."

"Oh, it's not? Because whatever it was, it led to my daughter getting stolen from me."

"This is a very dangerous way to look at what's happened."

"It's a very realistic way to look at what's happened."

She sighed, hesitantly sitting down next to me, "But it's not going to help you."

"Mom, it's just the way it is. I'm sorry, but it is."

"Glen, there's something I need to ask you."

I had known that one day she would need to know. But still, I felt a wave of anxiety pass through me. Answers were not something I was able to provide. The truth wasn't something I was good at confessing.

"What is it?" I asked, cold beads of sweat clinging to my skin like the lies I had told to pacify my mother in the months before.

"How did this begin?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

"There's a reason she had to kidnap her, isn't there? There was a desperation that was there. Not only that, but she seems a little ambitious for someone strung out on drugs, doesn't she?"

"I guess so."

"Was she ever on drugs?"

I shrugged. I felt like I was eleven years-old, standing in front of the broken window my baseball had smashed through. I was always leaving behind the glass of my mistakes for others to step in. My mistakes always multiplied.

"Glen…"

"I needed my daughter close to me, ok? And she wanted to take her away from me and move to New York. I couldn't let that happen."

"So you lied."

"So I lied."

"What did you think would happen?"

"I obviously didn't think it through. I know that. But I'm a parent. I would've done anything to be near my child. I'm sorry, but I can't apologize for something I felt I needed to do."

"You can be a parent and not be a man," she said, shaking her head, "what you did, Glen…whether you apologize or not…"

"Well, look, she wins. Doesn't she? So I guess the joke is on me. She has her."

"Your child. The joke is on your child because her mother is a stranger to her. Because now she's away from the only parent she's known. Now I don't condone what Ashley's done, but just as you're a father, she's a mother. What made you believe you had more rights to your daughter than she did?"

I had no answers that wouldn't sound juvenile. I was a selfish person. I wanted my daughter, and that was reason enough. These are the truths you can't say aloud. Most of mine were.

"What do you want from me? There's nothing I can do now."

"You need to tell the judge. You need to start being honest."

"They'll arrest me. Then what?"

"You assumed the risk when you lied."

"I'm your son."

"And that's why I'm asking for more from you. When Madeline is returned, she can live with me and your father until you're released."

"Wait…you're serious?"

"Completely."

"It's not going to happen."

"You need to consider it."

"I won't. Look at me," I said, moving forward to catch the attention of her eyes, "I won't do it."

"Then you're making the same mistake twice."

"It wouldn't be the first time, right?"

She left the room in silence, leaving the weight of the conversation behind with me. She had to know the consequences of what she was asking were beyond a prison sentence. It meant giving up my life to repent for a sin committed against someone who deserved everything she got. She wasn't a victim in this, and I would never make myself uncomfortable on her behalf. I would never suffer for Ashley Davies.

Spencer could chase her. She could attempt to weaken her grasp on Madeline as long as she wanted. But she was doing so in vain. Because going after Ashley was going after Rebecca, and my sister…

My sister was no match for Rebecca.

I never was.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

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_8 Months Earlier…_

The raven himself is hoarse  
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan  
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits  
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,  
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful  
Of direst cruelty!-Lady Macbeth

_Macbeth Act 1, scene 5, 38–43_

_---------------------------  
_

"You have to trust me."

"I'm trying. But trust isn't something that comes easy to me, Becca."

I held her in my arms, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing beneath my hands, the softness of her skin, the tremor of fear just below her immaculate surface.

But just as I had done for months, I absorbed every ounce of doubt with words, and with my enveloping warmth.

Mostly, with my hopeful, purposefully-placed lies and subtle aversions.

"Everything will be fine. It really will," I whispered into her hair.

"How can you be so sure?"

"We'll get Maggie because I won't stop trying until we do."

Because she's mine as much as she is yours—as is my miserable excuse for a husband.

"I just want my daughter back," she said, a tear escaping her eyes.

"And you'll have her," I say, gripping her tighter as we lay in the bed I hardly ever shared with Aiden, "you'll have her."

"I forgot about the perfume."

She changes course so effortlessly, I stare at her, confused. But then I catch the gleam of a perfume bottle and everything begins to make sense.

"You forgot…again?"

"I'm sorry."

"We've been over this."

"I know. And I keep forgetting. I'm really, really sorry, Becca."

"How many times? How many millions of times?"

"I'm an idiot, I know. I just keep letting it slip my mind."

"It's ok. It just means I'll have to change the sheets after you leave."

"I'll do it."

"Oh, please. I'll do it."

"I'm capable of doing things myself, you know," she says, pulling away from me like a spoiled toddler.

"Ashley…"

"You treat me like a child."

"I treat you like a child because that's what you are. You need someone to take care of you. That's just the way it is. God shows us mercy, Ashley. Those of us who weren't blessed with wisdom or intellect are blessed with the looks necessary to be taken care of those who possess wisdom or intellect. It doesn't make me love you any less. You're beautiful."

"That's all? That's all you see when you look at me?"

"I see someone I love…I see someone who deserves to have her daughter back."

"You love me?"

"You know I love you. Why else would I risk everything to help you?"

"What do you love, exactly? You love the fact that I'm fucking your husband?"

Self-control had never been my greatest quality. And I'm not ashamed to say I slapped her like the ungrateful bitch she had been from the moment we met.

I'd like to say that seeing her face bright red like the anger I saw behind my eyes, and the tears streaming down her pathetic face made my heart shift back into place.

But that would be yet another lie.

And I had done more than enough lying for her sake.

There are those of us who could be great. There are those of us who teeter on the brink of impossible superiority. There are those of us who if pushed off the edge of safety would fly, never realizing until that very moment that they were capable of soaring.

I was not one of these people.

I had always been the one to push.

Sometimes openly.

Sometimes secretly.

A woman on a mission must have the ability to be discreet.

She flew through the wind. I remained behind, steady and waiting on the ground. It's the only way to be a woman and survive, after all. This is a cruel world for those of us born under the burden of all that is feminine. We are mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers…yes. But some of us desire more. Some of us want it all.

Some of us deserve it all.

That's not to say that I don't find women beautiful. Because no, there is no more intoxicating sensation, nor a more worthy addiction than to fall victim to the soft plane of dangerous perfection that is a woman. There is nothing more worth fighting for than the privilege of sweet skin and full lips on your own.

But sometimes the woman you must fight for must be yourself.

Her tiny collection of scents lined the bathroom counter, reminding me of the presence of a woman in my psyche—in my husband's life. I kept them. I was possessive of the things that were hers. I wore them, wondering if he would ever make the connection. If he did, he said nothing. If he did not, it only made my hatred for him burn with even greater intensity.

He touched her. He touched her and hid it from me. He went to visit her in the middle of the night under the false assumption that I was in a deep, unrealistic sleep. Would he have cared? Did it even matter? He was desperate for her, and I knew the feeling.

So we both let our lips linger on her delicate skin, touching her like the paradisiacal anatomy she so gracefully maneuvered would somehow make us more than we were. We tainted her further with the responsibility of our lies, and she wore them with fierce loyalty—my lies.

My touch.

We were beyond lovers. We were partners.

We deceived him like we had been plotting since the beginning of time. When in actuality we had been plotting since the first night we spent together under the flickering company of a motel sign's neon lights.

I was so lonely.

I called the number advertised, took one look at her and knew I had found the one worth pushing. She was the one I had searched for in myself. I was to settle for what I could never be and replace my unreal expectations with a desperate but beautiful brunette. My mind was a steel trap, but she made men into mules. The world preferred her.

I had almost always been a powerless pawn, and now I was willing to pass the torch to anyone with open hands.

I had her writhing in physical bliss, calling out a name I hadn't heard at the apex of pleasure in years.

I was ambitious.

I developed a plan. We were to discard him when we had taken the last of what he could offer. The very thought excited me. So much so that a mere thought of our potential outcome sent a shiver of anticipation through me that was almost sexual in nature.

I felt larger than my circumstances.

I remembered reading "Macbeth" in the summer sun underneath the trees of my father's estate. I remembered what a woman must do to achieve her greatest destiny, and I chose to ignore the wringing hands and the paranoid fits. I was stronger than any fictional character. I have my milk up for gall and never looked back.

I made myself hate him as though it was an exercise.

His voice alone gave me reason to hate him. His voice spoke obvious lies. And I knew those lies, as I spoke them often.

"I don't love her. It's just business."

"Business."

"She's a whore."

I held my tongue.

"Aiden…"

"What? She's a whore. It's that simple, Becca. You don't fall in love with a whore," he said, releasing the clasp of his heavy watch and placing it on the antique dresser, "you don't even sleep with one. It's not worth the risk, you know?"

He had no idea the extent to which I knew.

"And of course, you have a wife."

"Right. Exactly. I have a wife."

"Are they beautiful…the women that live there?"

"It doesn't matter," he said with a sigh.

He hated questions, and I hated his answers. No one benefited from our late-night conversations. Flies on the wall grew bored of the repetition.

"I'm just curious."

"They're attractive, Becca. Yeah, I mean…they have to be."

"Why do they have to be?"

"Why do you think? What kind of guy pays a thousand bucks to fuck someone unattractive? Use your head."

"Who's the best?"

"I've answered this before."

"I don't remember."

"Why are you so jealous of her?"

"How can I be jealous? I don't even know her, Aiden. I haven't even seen her."

"You tell me."

"There's nothing to tell."

"Look, I'm not sleeping with Ashley. I'm married to you. I chose you when I married you, and I choose you again everyday, ok? Stop stressing yourself out over nothing. You're the one that encouraged me to go into this business in the first place."

"I know."

"And it's making us money, right?"

"Yes."

"Good, then can I get a minute of fucking peace, please? Could I get that?"

"You'll have to excuse a wife of being suspicious when her husband comes and goes like he hasn't made a commitment, and spends his nights with prostitutes."

"If I wanted to cheat, I could. And trust me, it wouldn't have to be with a prostitute."

It felt familiar. The disappointment, disgust, and urgency to escape that always settles in when I talk to my husband. But instead of the anger that used to fuel me, I simply felt amusement. Anger takes passion, weaves itself out of remaining feelings. Instead, I hid laughter as the site of red lipstick on the back of his neck came into view.

I knew she left it for me.

"I didn't know it was such a sacrifice…being faithful to me."

"We got a new one today," he said, changing the subject.

I let him.

"Is that right?"

"She's blonde….gorgeous."

"It's been awhile since you've had a blonde, hasn't it?

"Yeah."

"How nice."

The plan was all coming together.

"There are going to be a lot of happy men in this city, because this girl is good. One of the best. And she's clean. No track marks. No babies. She's a regular cash cow."

"That's great…"

"Yeah."

He slipped out of his shoes, sitting on the edge of the bed. His mind was clouded by the task at hand, and more than likely, thoughts of our shared mistress. His obsession with her made him overlook the obvious. It allowed us all the room in the world to see our plan through.

It was only a matter of time before I had everything I wanted and was laying low at my inherited Connecticut home…only a matter of time before I had the daughter I always wanted, and only a matter of time before I eased Ashley Davies out of the family portrait for good.


	6. Chapter 6

_Thanks so much for the support, guys. Enjoy!_

**Chapter 6:**

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A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox...they would understand the dilemma.—Marlene Dietrich

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Maybe this entire thing rests on my shoulders alone. Maybe this is all my undoing, sparked from the restless cycle of everything I deserved clashing with the sudden reality of all that my children feared.

They both knew.

Glen saw me with her, nursing a cup of black coffee and discussing local politics at a diner on the outskirts of the city. I'll never be able to fully describe the physical ramifications of seeing his eyes as they accidentally met mine on the eve of a moment's absent-minded thought. Suffice it to say, I was heartbroken. My son discovered the innocent yet damaging indiscretions of his hero and I realized I was more fearful than ashamed and therefore as far from heroic as I could manage in a fleeting moment's decision.

She tugged at my hand, attempting to bring me back to our conversation. It was the last gesture he needed, and he left with a nod of disbelief and a wave that was more habitual than purposeful.

We fought openly, but hid the truth. We fought with undertones in the kitchen.

The garage.

With me standing outside as he yelled through the window of his car.

In front of his mother over something as trite as the weather or the score of a game in which we were actually rooting for the same team.

Still, I saw her weekly.

Weakly.

I needed him to understand that I was lonely. For the most part, only guilty of cowardice. But his mother was the one woman who could only wrong him temporarily, and any offense committed against her, was an offense committed against him.

My lying was enough.

My son and I were now only able to be cold actors in public and seething liars in private. I can't tell you why I resented him. There was nothing about my circumstances that enabled me to attribute fault to him.

But I did.

He was young. Undecided. I missed the freedom of uttering the sentence, "I don't know." Because I was aging, becoming a man whose body betrayed wisdom for confusion. And she was a once-a-week thing of beauty who asked nothing of my supposed growth. She was content—for a price—to just let me be. And in her presence I took big, entitled breaths, shared nothing, and slipped in and out of every role I wanted to play in the span of a few hours before I journeyed home to be forced into one.

The last time we met, she spoke more honestly. But it was too late. I was already used to the way we had been. My words and even the way I spoke them were rituals.

It was just too late.

"Arthur?" she said, softly, clearing her throat as though my name was only the beginning.

"Yes?" I replied, just as quietly.

We were sharing a piece of apple pie split directly down the center. Though my half had diminished greatly and hers remained relatively intact. I took this as a sign that something serious was soon to be said, and I guarded against it like a naïve child forgetting his manners at the sight of cough medicine in his mother's hand.

Not her too.

Anyone but her.

"We need to talk."

"No."

"It's important, Art," she whined.

She sounded like a discouraged wife who stands at the counter regretting decades, a pregnant girlfriend who needs marriage to validate the sex, a six year-old looking through bridal magazines, tearing pages with her eager fingers.

"Fine. But out with it. I don't want to mess around with the sordid details and intros or whatever, Maddie."

"I understand," she said with a quick nod, "but I'm not exactly sure how to just...say it."

"Don't think too much, open your mouth, let the words come out. It's easy, you'll see."

"It's about your son."

My shoulders dropped, my conversational skills discarded, my brain rattled.

My indiscretion speaking of my son.

My worlds colliding like the tagline of a blockbuster summer movie.

"What is it?"

"He called and requested me."

"How?"

"Found the number at your office."

"How did he…"

"I wouldn't know."

"You can't say no?"

"We don't really say no in this business, Art. He offered a lot of money, and Aiden said yes without even asking me."

"This is really bad," I replied, simply, "I mean…what are we going to do?"

"That has nothing to do with me."

"It has everything to do with you."

"Your son…your problem."

Suddenly, I felt as lonely as ever. Her company was fleeting from the moment we first met eyes, and I had remained ignorant to the obvious for my own selfish reasons.

We parted ways soon after that, and like I said, it would be the last time I saw her. And now, I couldn't help but shake the tremendously frightening feeling that she was somehow involved in the disappearance of my granddaughter.

But Spencer…

I knew more than my wife, of course. But I couldn't compromise my own position by compromising Spencer's. It wasn't completely a selfish act. Spencer would want me to remain mum on the truth. And she believed she was capable of bringing Madeline home. It was my choice not to ask how, because "why" is somehow more important than "how" when a child is missing.

Spencer had her reasons, and it wasn't my place to judge, investigate, or doubt them. I took her late-night phone calls, listening to her whispered updates in the darkness of the living room so as not to wake Paula. Her last one was hurried and mysterious, but I was relieved to hear her voice.

"Dad…"

"Spence, I can barely hear you. Are you ok? Where are you?"

"Southeast. Moving north."

"You can't tell me where?"

Silence.

"I understand."

"Look, I'm going to need you to do me a favor, Dad."

"What do you need?" I ask, preparing myself for the strangest possible request.

"I need you to mention the name 'Rebecca Dennison' to the police. Tell them it's an anonymous tip or something, but trust me, this woman is dangerous."

"Rebecca? Aiden's wife?"

"You know her?"

"Well, sweetheart, the last name sort of gives her away, but I've talked to her once, yes."

"Why? What did she say?"

"She answered Aiden's phone. She was very helpful…nothing unusual or anything."

"Look, she's dangerous, ok? I can't tell you anything more than that."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Maybe."

"Is Madison involved?"

"Dad, you shouldn't feel…"

"Is she?"

"Yes. In a minor way…not a major way."

"Was I a setup?"

"I imagine so…yes."

"How did they know?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out, Dad."

We didn't talk much longer after that. There were screams in the background in the closing seconds, and as I stumbled to ask their origin, I looked down to find the call ended. I sat in the living room, breathing hard. It could've been an anxiety attack. I had been tricked and my body wasn't pleased.

"Was that her?"

It was easy to forget that Glen was living in the house. He didn't make his presence known often, instead taking bottles of potent alcohol back to his childhood room. All we heard from him were sobs in the middle of the night and the soft mumbling of his television.

But here he stood, staring at me, waiting for answers I wasn't allowed to give.

"Who, son?"

"Who do you think?"

"I can't say."

"I know it's that whore. There's no need in lying about it to me."

I breathed a sigh of relief, suddenly glad that his brain was drowned in booze.

"What do you want me to say?"

"You want me to forget that this isn't the first time."

"Again? You bring this up again?"

"Once a cheater, always a cheater."

"Once an entitled, needy child always an entitled, needy child."

"Fuck you."

"What do you want me to do, Glen? Huh? What is it that you want, exactly?"

"There's nothing you can do," he said, releasing a small laugh as he swayed back and forth from the alcohol's presence in his body, "everything just sucks. She took her. She and that bitch took my daughter."

"Who?"

"That bitch."

I sighed. He was useless in his present condition. They had betrayed him by taking his daughter. He had betrayed his daughter by giving into the drinking.

"What's her name, Glen?"

"Who, Rebecca?"

Rebecca.

"Who's Rebecca?" I asked, walking towards him.

"She's a bitch. That's all you need to know. And no, you can't fuck her."

"I need to know who she is, Glen. It's important. Please, just…"

"Ashley's…who knows? I always assumed there was something going on, but she introduced her as a friend, so I don't really know. But she was like…she was fucking obsessed with her. I don't know why, but man…she was everywhere all the time. Once, she even told me to tell you hello, but I think she was joking. I don't know. I'm tired."

"Why would she say that? Why would she know me?"

And as I said the words, something clicked. Suddenly, I knew too much. Suddenly, the anxiety crept back in. Suddenly, my memory found her name and I realized how frightening our situation truly was.

Because Rebecca was Lorna.

And Lorna was my patient.

We had joked over and over again. It was always so obvious that she had chosen the name. Written it down on her file in order to protect some part of her life, someone in her life, something. But still, the name stuck, though I felt like a fraud writing it in her case file.

Lorna Doone—ego-syntonic, Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

She referred to herself as "Rebecca" once by accident. Stumbled through an explanation of a middle name. But I knew…

I violated procedure. Met with her as a friend. Told her too much. Needed my confessions to be heard by someone.

And now, I was paying for it.

We all were.


	7. Chapter 7

**_Enjoy, guys!_**

**Chapter 7:**

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Although a man may be as simple as the flowers of the field; knowing when, but scarcely why, he closes to the bitter wind; and feeling why, but scarcely when, he opens to the genial sun; yet without his questing much into the capsule of himself--to do which is a misery—he may have a general notion how he happens to be getting on.—Lorna Doone Chapter LXVII.

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I think about him a lot on these long stretches of winding, monotonous road. Purples into oranges and all at once it seems, into darkness. Sometimes these roads last forever, and I fear the fact that I can't look backwards. If I could look backwards, the darkness wouldn't come so quickly. Behind me, the colors still exist.

She's restrained almost every part of me now.

I'm tied up and bound and ultimately stuck. But somehow it's still better than being in my small house. Waiting for her. It is better to be here than to anticipate it.

I've made her into a villain because it's easier. When in fact, she's merely the result of actions I participated in and for that, I am owed this restraint. For my lack of restraint in the months in the Dennison House, I am now constantly restrained. My circumstances are poetic and poetry is not always beautiful.

We're moving north now and soon we'll be close to where they are. This brings me very little comfort. Because proximity means I better start talking, and my words better bring her directly to Ashley.

The tragedy of it all is that she fools no one but herself. She wants her niece, of course. She needs to fix what she's done, heal the wounds she's guilted herself into believing she inflicted. But I imagine that on the road her mind wanders to thoughts of my sister, despite all her trying. It was once evident in the features I can no longer see, and still evident in the anxious sighs I could still hear.

"We're stopping soon."

I can't reply, my words stifled by the soft scarf that covers my mouth, it's knot at the back of my head. And there are no gestures that can be made in my present position, not that she could see them anyway. I had been moved to the backseat for most travel now, due to all of my protesting and attempts to catch the attention of other drivers.

Imagine.

"And we're almost there, Kyla. One more day of driving, a motel for the night and then it's time for you to fucking talk, right?" she says, quickly glancing back at me for emphasis.

"I'm not saying I'll kill you, of course. That wouldn't even be smart of me. But there are things you can do that are worse than death."

I swallowed, nervously.

"All I need is my niece back, Ky. That's it. That's not unreasonable, is it? I just want what was taken from my family."

She usually drives through part of the night, so that no one is around to see her check into the motel, roughly untie my feet to enable slight mobility, rest the blade at the small of my back, and push me toward the room she always made sure was on the first floor.

"Tell me, Ky…is that so wrong?"

She downed the window, blowing smoke out of the available inches of space.

If I rebel, she might be the death of me. But surely those cigarettes would be the death of her. A new one met her lips every five minutes. I couldn't see her clearly, but I could hear the rustling of the paper and plastic and eventually the rush of wind from the window. I could feel the cold air on my face, suddenly remembering a moment with him that I never shared with Ashley…or anyone else. Moments with him were what kept me sane in such unusual circumstances, with such a lack of control, with such a heavy debt to the woman they had both conspired against for a child that shouldn't be juggled.

"I forgot. You can't talk, can you?" she whispered, as if I suddenly couldn't hear either.

There was no romance, no actuality. There was no future, no entitlement. No hope, yet no relief. She was what he wanted, and I was merely her sister who could be used to help him bring her closer. But she was being used as well. It was obvious, almost as though the strings that Rebecca used to keep her in a comfortably subordinate position were visible to everyone but Ashley and Aiden.

Or maybe they were just visible to a sister who knew better.

There was something about him that was good, despite what he had been accused of. It was hard for me to see him as a monster. Especially in the monstrous glow of those around him.

Those like Rebecca.

She pulled over, driving recklessly in an area lit by flickering lights. I could see them through the moon roof, watch them light up the rope around my wrists and then quickly leave them dark again.

The vehicle jolted to a stop, signaling that our day of driving had come to a close.

"I'll be right back," she says, hopping out of the car, anxiously.

So far, this "kidnapper" title didn't suit her. She still hated this part. The reality of hiding a person. The reality, period.

Aiden could've avoided this entire mess. The mess that is Ashley Davies. Don't get me wrong, I love her like…like…

…like a sister. Like a sister that had been forced upon me at an age that disagreed with change.

But she had always been looking for something, finding it in everyone. Investing everything. Gaining nothing.

And Aiden was too good for her. He was too stable for the rocky waves of my sister's troubled existence. But still he launched his boat and disregarded the hits he took in an effort to save her from herself. What he didn't know, was that it was his wife that she needed saving from.

As did he.

The door opened, and I was greeted to the northeast with a rush of cold air and the feeling of Spencer's hands on the knot resting at my ankle.

"You know the drill…" she murmurs, sighing deeply, "we've made it this far."

She pulls me towards her by my legs, until my feet are touching the ground and her knife is at my back. We're parked directly in front of our door. No chance of catching the attention of a willing stranger or truck-driving Samaritan. I have a mere three feet or so of walking, and then I am as hopeless as I was in the back of the car.

For whatever reason, she removes unties the scarf that keeps my potential screams muffled. Apparently, she's choosing to overlook the other night.

"Where are we going tomorrow, Kyla? Hmm? Where's Ashley?"

And now I understand why she needs to hear me clearly.

"I don't know how many times I have to tell you…I'm not talking."

"That's just such a bad idea," she says, shaking her head as if she suddenly feels sympathy for the fact that I could be so stupid, "such a terrible, terrible idea. Look, I'm not going to hurt her."

I laughed, and it felt good. It had been too long, and even as it was happening I focused on how strange it sounded as it filled the room of bare necessities with its rolling pleasure.

"You're not going to hurt her? Are you fucking kidding me? It's all you want to do! And don't think for a minute that I care about what happens to her."

It wasn't completely truthful, but that didn't matter. I simply needed to diffuse her threat before she felt the need to act on it out of desperation alone.

"You care. Don't bullshit me."

So maybe I wasn't the greatest liar. Or maybe it was simply that our positions were too similar. We were both saying things that didn't suit who we knew each other to be and wearing armor that was so heavy it did more harm than help to our moral causes.

This wasn't Spencer.

And this certainly wasn't me.

Yes, I felt guilty. Yes, I deserved to be snatched away from my recently acquired autonomy. But every part of the person I was naturally screamed its defense. Being captured did nothing to dissolve the essentials of Kyla Woods. It only heightened them.

There was a knock. One hard, authoritative knock. Spencer flinched, showing yet another moment's weakness.

"Who is it?" she called from where she stood next to the bed, glaring at me.

This was it, and she knew it. This was my chance. Her worried face told me she could see this entire forced escapade coming to an unexpected ending.

"Ms. Doone, someone called the front desk and said it looked as though you might need some assistance."

Scream.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted this to be over. I needed rescue, and still…

"No…no, I'm fine. Thank you."

I heard his footsteps as he walked away from the circumstance that was quite possibly my last chance.

I couldn't force myself to save myself. I couldn't make the one thing happen that I needed so badly. I couldn't acquire my freedom even when standing in its fleeting light.

Stockholm Syndrome at its utter finest. She was right.

I was stupid.

"Who is Ms. Doone?" I ask, my head hung in disbelief.

She answers conversationally, as if she's just as shocked as I am by my sudden muteness, "Oh, um…I don't know. It's a name Ashley used…after we checked into the hotel. You know, when we left."

"Doone?"

"Lorna Doone."

"Like…the cookies?"

"No, like the book, I guess. Who knows?"

"Why would you still use it?"

"I don't know, Kyla. Does it matter?"

"Hey, I'm just asking, ok?"

She started pacing, eventually sitting on the edge of the bed, "I need to know where she is."

"Spencer…"

"I have to know," she says, softly. When her eyes raise to find mine, there are tears in them. And I am instantly jealous.

There's nothing I wouldn't give (except the effort to scream) to be able to show emotion. But I can only show impenetrable strength.

"What is this? What's going on?" I ask, sitting in a chair that faces her.

"I need answers, Ky. Someone has to tell me why this happened. How did it start? Why me? What was real…what wasn't?"

"Promise me, Spencer…and I know I don't deserve anything from you. Any kind of mercy. But please promise me that when all of this is said and done and the dust has settled, promise me that you'll spare her. Because if you only knew how Rebecca is…the way she treats her…you would understand."

"Explain it to me."

I shrug as best I can with my limited mobility, "I wouldn't know where to begin."

She nods, walking over to where I stand. Her fingers go to work untying the rope around my wrists. The act seems so intimate, that my eyes instantly flutter closed.

"Can I trust you?" she whispers, holding my hands.

Can she? Because I needed to ask myself the very same question.

"Yes," I say, hating that it just might be true.

"Then tell me."

The second my mouth opened, the entire story poured out like an ocean of baited breaths. And those even, soft words I spoke for hours felt like the loudest screams I had ever been capable of releasing.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 9:

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"Oh, you **weak**, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you -- gently, with love, and hand your life back to you."

Tennessee Williams

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When we first met, I thought I knew who she was. The desires that were to make up her already tainted destiny could be manipulated with ridiculous subtleties and easy posturing. I had collected the truths like they were merely an activity and opted instead for the lies with everyone else. But she was different. She was going to force my hand. I was preparing myself to let her. I was unwilling to overcome her. I simply wanted in.

All in.

But fate is cruel. It slips around the trigger of the unplanned but always seen and pulls carelessly.

And I had forgotten.

It was all apart of the overwhelming scheme, the thickening plot, the tangled web we would excitedly weave as though our actions were floating alone without consequences. Just bitterly executed measures and bars of temporary satisfaction in hopes for more. More than ourselves. More than destiny had provided thus far.

I remember the first time I saw a glimpse of what would wreck me, standing there in the kitchen, recently embraced. Unpleasantly surprised by my presence. I was an interruption.

When I confronted her that night, after unsuccessfully attempting to will away what I then knew, she smiled.

She smiled and nodded proudly, as she had forgotten the meaning of fate as well. She had forgotten how easily my temper could become aroused.

"What is this, Ashley? Huh, what is this smile?"

"I'm not smiling, am I?" she asks, smugly.

It's amazing the various, schizophrenic personalities love can produce. I had never seen her smug.

Hopeful.

Desperate.

Gentle.

Aggressive.

Needy.

But never smug. Never with me.

"Don't act like I'm stupid. Not even for a second," I warned.

But she saw what she wanted. I had never presented myself as a threat to her and so far, she had no reason to assume I could be anyone else other than the version she knew. We were alike in that way.

We were both on our knees. Waiting for someone to protect the fragility of our worlds as we knew them.

But I had been waiting for her.

And she…she had been waiting for the naïve blonde upstairs who she could never completely have.

"I'm not. You're not stupid."

"I know that."

"Well, hey…I do too," she says, mechanically stroking my arm. The rhythm of it created a painful panic that seared every part of my occasionally, uninspired psychic nature. I knew I was done with her.

More, that she was done with me.

"You're in love with her."

"She thinks so."

"Beyond that, Ashley. You're really, actually in love with her…as if anything good can come of it."

"Where is this coming from?"

"I've seen the way you look at her now. I see the way you look when you talk about her, and I know that look. I know it because that's the way I look at you. That's the way that I look when I'm talking about you."

"Since when do you talk about me, Aiden? To who? Your wife?"

"Just answer me, please."

"What? What is it?" she asked, "I don't even know what you're talking about."

"You don't?"

"I don't want to play the game. If there's something you want to know then just ask!"

"I will…and I have. Tell me, are you or are you not in love with Spencer?"

She said nothing, making a strange noise before a defensive smile spread across her speechless face.

"Ash…please…"

"Does it matter?"

And that was all. She said nothing else about her growing sincerity. Nothing about the character consuming and becoming the actress.

"It matters to me."

"Come here," she said with a sigh, offering her hand to me, "come be with me."

But she was unenthusiastic.

Tired.

Distracted.

"Why would I do that?"

"What? Come on, Aiden. Let's have some fun for awhile, ok?"

It was the final straw for me. I had become a john for her. A job. I was supposed to be her hero. I was supposed to save her from the strangers and the lawyers. Separate the work from the play.

She was supposed to be in love with me.

"Don't talk to me like that, please. Don't talk to me like I'm paying."

"I'm going to bed."

"I'm sure. The question is, are you going to bed here or are you going to bed with…her?"

"Nothing is going to change. I'm still going to do whatever it takes to get my daughter back."

"Is that so?"

"Of course."

"Falling for her wasn't apart of the plan."

"Aiden…"

"No…no! Listen to me, Ashley. This isn't a good idea. She isn't a good idea. And what about me? Have you thought about the fact that you're supposed to be mine?"

"Have I thought about it?"

"Did the question confuse you?"

"I need you to stop being so possessive. You're going to ruin everything. And she'll know, Aiden. I promise she'll know because she's not stupid, ok? She's not completely fucking stupid."

"She seems pretty fucking stupid to me. If she believes you actually love her then she's an idiot. A fool. Just like me."

She smiles, shaking her head at me. I feel a wave of shame running through every possible part of me. It quickly turns to anger.

But not towards her.

I could never be angry at her. As I said, I was on my knees at the mere thought of Ashley Davies.

"Aiden, go home to your wife. Get some rest. We can talk this into the ground later. But tonight? Tonight I just want to sleep."

"I can stay."

"You should go, though."

"Why do you care?"

"I don't need her getting suspicious. That's all."

"She's already suspicious."

"Then I don't need her getting more suspicious, do I?"

My wife was a mysterious, troubled woman. Initially, it was what attracted me to her. I wanted someone to take care of. Someone to save. I wanted to project and deflect and fix. But there was nothing, no one that could save Rebecca.

Not even the medication.

It took someone better, stronger than myself. It took a patience I wasn't equipped with, a stability I was too reckless to crave, a wanting that marriage had rendered impossible.

"No. No one needs that."

"Exactly."

I sighed, overwhelmed by how quickly everything could change, "Tell me you still love me."

"You know I do."

"Just say it."

She was used to dealing with my insecurities. Always ready to become the strange parent to one of my strange episodes.

"I love you. Now, go home."

"Do you love her?"

"Goodnight."

I wanted to cry, guilt her, put up a fight, scream. Whatever it took to force the truth. But desperation simply fueled my angry at a greedy, stupid blonde.

I wanted everything that Ashley wanted.

I wanted everything that kept me from having her all to myself.

I wanted it all.

"Goodnight," I said with a smile, meekly walking towards the door, "I love you too."

And I stood outside her door for a long time before ascending the steps. But as I did, I could already feel the heat of embarrassment settling on the back of my neck. How dare she take Ashley from me.

How dare she.

"Ashley," she whispered, as I swung the door wide open.

I was building the strength to be so weak.

"Not so much," I said, managing a smile through the incredible anger.

"Oh, Aiden…hi."

"Disappointed?"

"No, I just…"

"Well, I'm disappointed too," I say, pushing past her and into the cold, open room, "I'm very, very disappointed."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She wasn't sorry.

"Are you?" I ask, shaking my head.

"Sure."

"Well, that's good. That's really good."

"I have an early morning, ok? So maybe I should go back to bed."

"In just a second," I said, clinching my fists as she played cordial.

"Um…ok."

"I talked to Ashley. But hey, I'm sure you know that already, right?"

"She mentioned that she was…"

I'm sure she did.

"And she informed me that you two are together. Which is just fucking great. I mean, really great."

"Thanks."

"But it's interesting, you know? Because I'm sure you know that she and I were a thing."

"A thing?"

"Yeah, we were fucking."

Seeing her uncomfortable restored so much power.

"Aiden…"

"I don't usually do that, Spencer. I don't usually fuck my girls. But she's special. I'm sure you agree."

"She's amazing."

And that was what made up my mind. Seeing the look on her face.

The sincerity there.

I was jealous of a whore, and in love with another.


	9. Chapter 9

**_Hello, everyone! I hope you guys had an awesome holiday season. I thought that for the new year, I would add a few fun facts to the beginning of every chapter. You've got to know by now how much I love and appreciate you guys for coming over here and reading this thing. I really, really do. It means even more now that the show is off and the interest is fading. So I hope everyone sticks around and sees this thing through. Now, when I say "fun facts"...let's face it, this story isn't fun in the least. But there are a few little background facts that can make it a tiny bit more fun. Kinda like "Pop-Up Video" but for fan fic, got it? Cool...let's do a couple..._**

!1. I almost added an additional character to the original story named "Erica." She was going to be an old "acquaintance" of Spencer's.

!2. The ending of "The Dennison House" could've gone two ways. I set up the story from the very beginning to potentially end exactly as it did. But I also had the option of somehow ignoring all the set-ups and instead opting for a happy ending in which everyone was happy and Spashley prevails. And to be honest, I decided only as I wrote the very last few paragraphs. But then I thought, all that work for nothing? No way. On with the sequel. And now, here we are...

**_P.S. No, I will NEVER write on top whose perspective the chapter is in. Half the fun is figuring it out! :) K?_**

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**CHAPTER 9:**

_An American Indian elder described his own inner struggles this way: "Inside of me there two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time." When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed the most."__—_Native American Proverb.

----------------------------

The occasional convex shape traveling the dark wall as a shadow without destination. Sleepy patterns trailing the expanse of exposed skin and settling upon her lower back. These are the moments that make me reconsider everything. These are the moments that make it so much harder to lie and forget.

Lie and forget.

Lie and forget.

Lie and forget.

Forget and lie.

Lie to forget.

Lie to forget.

Forget to lie.

I move the fingers used to silence Aiden in the night and touch her as though I deserve access to something so beautiful, tracing every part of her like a map that leads to another circumstance, a moment's quick decision that ends in her favor, a plan that hasn't been sewn into possibility under Rebecca's watchful eyes, options that I've been trained to believe no longer apply to me.

Sacrificing humanity in order to obtain the one part of me that made me human.

She feels me even in her sleep, and slowly fractions of naïve blue are revealed to me and fractions of my heart segment and break apart like slowly shattering ice. A smile meant to do nothing but uncontrollably exist rushes to assure me that she feels the same way—as though she could ever know the way I feel.

We are not the same at all.

Lie.

"Ash…"

"Spence."

"What time…what time is it?"

"It's late or maybe early. I don't know. I didn't mean to wake you."

Lie and forget.

"It's ok. I've been meaning to start waking up at…" she says, reaching for her watch, "4:00 in the morning."

"Oh yeah?" I laugh, and it sounds like Rebecca.

"Absolutely."

"In that case, you're welcome."

She smiles, and I do my best to memorize the moment, attempting to stop the etching of what was to come. I can see the beginning of permanence on her skin like a haunting, crawling, memorial of choice. No one will believe me when I try to explain. No one can show compassion when confronted with the reality of my lies. No one will understand that my daughter is worth causing so many people such immense pain. Not when she's safe in her father's arms. Not when my purpose is a greedy, expectant thing with a mind of its own in the shape of someone else's cold wife.

Someone might even see me as selfish. Motivated by all the wrong reasons. And maybe they would be right. It's just so hard to see outside of myself sometimes. The lies I was fed have been digested with assistance, and now I feed them to her with the same medicine.

"I have a job," she says with a yawn.

"When?"

"This afternoon. But other than that, I'm free. We should do something."

"Do something?"

"We should go to the movies or something. Something normal."

"Are you trying to make it sound as though we're not ordinarily normal? Because I think we're absolutely saturated in normalcy. Just a nice little lesbian prostituting couple from the big city."

Only, one of us is wearing a mask the other either can't or refuses to see and she stacks indiscretions and dishonesty like limp bodies one on top of the other until her view of the wide-open door is utterly obstructed.

Lie to forget.

"If they make this into a movie, I want Cate Blanchett to play me," she says, absent-mindedly playing with escaping strands of my hair.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"She seems a bit too…formal."

"I'm totally formal. Whatever. Who do you want to play you?"

Me?

"I'd play myself."

"Boring!"

"Why?"

"Who wants to play themselves? It would be weird. It would be like…I don't even know. How do you do that?"

"Play yourself?"

"Yeah."

"You just…you act out a version of yourself that's close to who you actually are, but not quite. You would have to see yourself the way other people see you, all while acknowledging…somehow showing that something lies beneath the surface that contradicts everything. Enough to make people interested in you. And even then, you know…it's fine. Everything's fine. People never actually want to know who you are, Spencer, ok? They just don't. They think they do, but look…think of who you are. Who you really, really are and ask yourself if that's a mess anyone would willingly sort through with you. Who would admit—through consent—that they want to jump into a big pile of shit with you—your own shit, at that—and wade around for years and years? And if they do, then that just means that whatever they're hiding must be even worse than what you're hiding. Their shit must make your shit look like a walk in the fucking park. You would drown in whatever it is that makes them who they are."

"I don't believe that."

"Then you've lived a very privileged life, Spence."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" I ask, quickly adjusting my posture. Relaxing my rigid shoulders. Moving my fists into open palms and resting them on my thighs.

"Like you hate me."

"I don't hate you."

And she'll never understand.

And she'll never understand.

And she'll never understand.

And she'll never know to listen to every intonation. And she'll never realize that with her, no words are casually tossed into our created atmosphere like rocks into a still pond, returned so easily to what shaped them to begin with. Starting over to be worn away again and again. Sometimes I mean what I say to her so deeply that it makes me feel insane. I've never been so desperate to communicate. And she'll never understand.

"Sometimes you look at me like you're angry that I'm not more fucked up or something."

"Well, I don't meant to."

"I know."

She sits up, leaning against her headboard and staring. I meet her eyes, because the last thing I need to show in the moment is fear. Or sincerity. And no, I couldn't reconcile my fear of falling for her with my fear of losing Rebecca's control over me. Who would I be without her? Who would take care of me? Who would stay when the pain that I felt made me someone who couldn't be loved?

"I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry for," she says with a smile, and for a mere second, I think she could be right.

And then like a curtain being drawn in the stage of my mind, I see the plan unfolding. I see the moment I realized she liked me and the night I told Aiden at the bar downstairs. I see Rebecca hesitantly admitting that this plan could be better. I could make her love me. I see myself wishing I had never said any of my suspicions aloud. Wishing that for once, I had kept something nice for myself without offering it up for her twisted approval.

"We all have something to be sorry for."

"I don't agree with that. People fuck up, Ashley. It's what we do best. But we're the only animals that punish ourselves forever. We live a beautiful life. And yeah, it's not the life that someone else would choose for themselves. It might not be the life that our parents would choose for us. But it's ours. No one needs to be forgiven for simply living."

"You're a prostitute. Is that a beautiful life?"

"I chose it."

"Answer the question."

"I chose it, Ash. Yes, it's a beautiful life. I had choices. That's fucking beautiful!" she says, throwing her arms around me, "a life of choices…what could be better than that, huh? What could be better?"

"You don't choose everything that happens to you. Trust me."

Remember.

"Fine. Then all the more reason to really enjoy the parts that I do get to choose."

I nod, because I want her to stop talking. Her words are acidic in the self-inflicted wounds that make me who I am. Rebecca is the salve that holds me together. She is like me. We are both suffering from our misplaced fates and destructive impulses.

"Ash, are you okay? I hate when you get like this…all 'woe is me.' It scares me for you."

And she'll never understand.

"I'm fine."

"Look at me," she says, gently nudging my face so that our eyes are locked, "I care about you. I care about what's going on with you and I promise…I promise, you can tell me anything. I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere. You can trust me."

"No."

"No?"

"Spencer…"

"You're not alone, Ashley. You're not alone…you're not alone…"

She repeats it over and over as she holds me, and we slowly rock back and forth. I am reduced to an infant.

Forget to remember.

"I have to tell you something."

"What?"

She stares back at me with so much hope and anticipation and I realize very quickly that I'm not the only child here. Maybe we are more alike than I'd like to believe and it's dangerous to us both.

"I…me and someone else, we…" I stutter.

"You can tell me anything."

"This has all been a…you and I, we're…"

I can't. I can't say it. I can't free her with the truth. I need her too much and the words would send her running. I'll take her as long as I can have her in any way I can.

"Just say it."

I kiss her instead, feeling warmth and sincerity everywhere she touches me. And when I finally pull away, I almost forget.

"I do trust you."

"You do?"

"I do."

I forget to lie.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Hello, everyone! Sorry I didn't get this chapter up last night, but at the same time...no, I'm not. I'm never going to post a chapter that I don't feel is up to par, and I would hope that you wouldn't want me to either. But I do appreciate (as usual) all the discussion and debate and speculation and of course if I could, I would add to it. Unfortunately, I can't. What I can say, before you set off to read this chapter is that it's important to remember what's at stake here. It's important not to focus purely on the revenge aspect. I think this chapter says it better than I can, but keep in mind that Spencer has lost a lot more than a girlfriend and a niece. She lost sight of herself and lost a sense of security and trust. Decide what you think is more important in the long-run. Hitting Ashley over the head with a toaster or remembering what was good about who she was.**_

Fun Fact #1-This story was almost called "The Road." But then I thought it was a bit presumptuous of me as a writer, you know?

Fun Fact #2-It's probably hard to understand, but writing this story has given me a lot of insight (and free therapy) to my own life. I think it's an extremely symbolic story. You have the journey, the force of evil, the quest to discover what you'll do when confronted with that opposing force, the hope you have despite what you've seen, and the ultimate moment when you decide what's most important. I'd like to pretend that I'm able to remove myself fully from my writing, but I don't think that's possible. If you look in the seams of this story, I'm there.

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**_

**CHAPTER 10:**

"_When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be—I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars __waiting__ with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."—Wendell Berry._

_--------------  
_

"Anything else?"

As if there could be anything else.

As if her words could scald again on wounds that had already scarred and twisted and left an impossible consistency on the very idea of "anything else." Surprises were limited in their power in the wake of her sister.

"Nothing else."

We were still and mostly silent, waiting for my decision. She could be discarded now.

And she knew it, felt it heavily.

Once saturated in information and necessity, she had been thoroughly wrung of all knowledge. Squeezed for the bitter juice that would bring me to Ashley. But now…

Now she was useless. More than that.

A hindrance.

A liability.

But still there was the waiting. How jaded had my situation made me? Was my bark overwhelmingly more threatening than my bite? I was helplessly shrugging off the clothes of a captor. Watching them fall around my feet and hinder every possible movement like the quicksand of impossible promises.

This was it.

"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked, watching me closely from the hotel bed. Her clothing bland and simple in comparison to the gaudy zig-zag pattern of the cheap bedspread. She looked absolutely ridiculous asking such a serious question, and I would've said so, but why?

It took an entire night for Kyla to divulge it all. Secrets crept from her mouth for hours, her voice even and clear as she spoke them. And I listened like a dutiful parent as she unloaded months-worth of plans, red tape, and regret.

"What do you mean?" I ask, looking towards the window, though it was concealed by heavy curtains.

"Where am I supposed to go, Spencer? What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know."

I don't care.

"Are you leaving me here…in this room?"

"I hadn't really thought this part out, I guess."

Lies.

"I can tell."

"I could take you to Ashley."

"I don't want that."

"Why?"

"It's just not what I want."

Because you trust her as little as I do. Because you know the secrets you've told could save your life when it came to me, and end it when it came to her.

"You have to go somewhere."

"I know."

"Actually," I said, sitting beside her on the bed, watching her bob slightly with the addition of my weight, "I did think this part out."

"So…"

"I was going to kill you."

"Do you think you could've killed me? Honestly?"

"Probably not. But at that time I felt like I could have, yeah. Who knows, Kyla? How do you plan something like this? I mean, it's not who I am."

"I know."

No.

No, you don't.

"It's not like…it's not like I wanted this. It's not like…"

"I know. Spencer, do I look like I'm in a place to judge you? Really? Look at what I've done. Just look at what I've done to you."

"Yeah, well…"

"I don't know my sister well enough to know what she could possibly say to you. I don't think there's anything she can do or say at this point, you know? She fucked up. We all did. And I'm not really sure what you stand to gain now that you have the truth…from me. But I know that I owe you more than an apology for my part. And since I don't have any other words, I guess all I can say is that I'm sorry."

"He did rape me, you know. I've never lied about that."

"What?"

"He raped me."

"What are you talking about? Why are you saying that?"

"When I talk about him, you seem angry. Defensive. Maybe you have feelings for him. I'm not exactly sure. But in case you do, I'm warning you. And you know that the last thing I need to do at this point is lie, ok? What he did to me is bad enough without the rape, and unspeakable with it. You can't trust him. Even if you want to, you can't trust him, Kyla. I'm serious."

Why did I care? Why not allow her to love a monster after all that had transpired? I don't know. Maybe the closer I got to the source of it all, the more humanity I re-acquired. Maybe I was coming full circle as the waiting came to a close. It seemed to work. Symbolically, at least.

"He would never hurt me."

"You haven't learned anything? After all this time you've learned nothing?"

"He would never hurt me," she repeated with a smug smile.

"You'd be surprised at who could hurt you."

"He would never hurt me…neither would you."

"I probably wouldn't. But you can't know that for sure."

"You would've done it by now. And I did what you wanted. I led you to my sister."

"You owe me more than that."

"What do you want, Spencer? A fucking sonnet?"

I was nervous, anxious. Screaming obscenities on the inside, fighting the urge to run to the bathroom and never face her at all. What had I wanted to begin with? Kyla was right. What could be gained now?

My niece.

I was doing it for Maggie.

I slapped Kyla as hard as I could, knowing it was as far as I would ever go. That's exactly why I needed to do it. To draw my line in the sand and have it visible, as if to say "This is it. This is as far as I can go. This is how much compassion can be spared. On the other side of this line is where I really am. Who I really am."

I heard her cry out, but I was too busy reveling in the tiny pinpricks I felt on the palm of my hand from where it had met her face to care that I had caused pain. And maybe that sensation alone brought me closer to Ashley. Maybe that was the kind of symbolism that forgiveness was built upon. I could only feel the action. The consequence was drowned out in the noise of pure focus on the task at hand.

Maybe I could never forgive. But maybe I wasn't so good, so innocent that I couldn't understand. Sometimes (often) the why's are more convincing that the how's.

"I'm sorry," Kyla said, but it was aggressive and perhaps, too late.

Either way, it meant nothing.

And as I looked into her eyes, somehow on the other side of the room despite my failure to remember the movements that brought me across from her as opposed to beside her, I knew it was time for us to separate. Using an enemy as a security blanket wasn't the strategy I was hoping for, after all.

"I'm leaving," I say, reaching for my overnight bag.

"You slap me and then you leave?"

"I can't wait any longer. It's making me crazy."

"Obviously."

"You know, Kyla, it's getting really hard to tell if you're sincere or not. And the truth is, I don't want to know. Because more than anything I want to believe that there's some good left in this…in all of this. Some hope. So I'm going to leave before you ruin that for me. Thanks for the information. Get someone to help you with the rope."

I left her there. She didn't even say anything, simply nodded as the tears streamed. She looked very much the way I found her in Arizona.

Full circle, indeed.

--------------------------

I had lunch in a diner, basked in its quaintness and promise of normalcy for hours too long. The waitress had lines in her face that spoke to me like the final destination in the atlas of life. Driving recklessly and off-course to arrive at the very same place, but with more knowledge of the road. Her voice was soft but demanding, and I knew that I wasn't the only one who had suffered. I shared suffering with the very best and the very worst and those who tried and those who let things happen. But we all reached the same point, whether we liked it or not.

I needed another night.

But it couldn't be spent in a hotel. They reminded me of Kyla, and that was a leg of the journey that I needed to forget. Falling asleep and waking to an image of someone bound and in your presence with no will of their own made a person feel crazy.

Had Ashley felt crazy? Had the deception touched her at all?

I had a tent. I paid five dollars for a gas station sandwich and a coffee and searched the sides of the highway for an ideal camping spot for the night. I needed peace. I needed to remember myself in the day before I confronted a part of my past. I needed to ask the right questions, and prepare to hear answers that couldn't possibly please me.

I thought long and hard under the stars, and when compared to the endless expanse of the dark but clear sky, everything else seemed so very small. What was she compared to nature? Who was she compared to my nature?

Tomorrow, when we finally came face-to-face, more than anything else, I had to remember who I was. Because at the risk of losing myself completely, who she was didn't seem to matter and what she had done was a star in a sky of stars that could never be counted.

I was ready.


	11. Chapter 11

Hellooooooo, everyone! We have two more chapter after this, and then we're done. Well, it's more like one more chapter and then an epilogue of sorts. Anyway, I have a new story on the way despite my claim of retirement. I swear this is the last one, and then I'm to Florida for sun and Bingo and spa dates. So look out for that story very soon. Thanks for reading, thanks for feedbacking, thanks for everything.

FUN FACTS:

1. I try to incorporate a few of the very same lines into every story I've written. A few of those lines are in this chapter.

2. I'm thinking that for the new story, I will steal an idea from a few great writers and insert the songs that inspired me for each chapter. I listen to music every time I write a chapter, but I never list it. I should. You know, just because. Though if it's something embarrassing ("Candy" by Mandy Moore), we'll just forget about it, k?

----------------------------------

**Chapter 11:**

There is really nothing you must be. And there is nothing you must do. There is really nothing you must have. And there is nothing you must know. There is really nothing you must become. However it helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains the earth gets wet... "Whatever, there are consequences. Nobody is exempt," said the Master.

**Robert Fulghum** (1937 - )

Source: _It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, Page: 196_

_-----------------------------------  
_

A simple day.

The distorted mumbling of a television in a close room.

The occasional exclamation from my child followed by overzealous straw sipping and the gentle creaking of a miniature rocking chair on old hardwood.

The sound of a loud conversation about paint sneaking in through a window.

A simple day.

The absence of Rebecca's hard footsteps, scraping towards me like a familiar demon.

The absence of a sequence of jarring telephone beckoning with an accusatory voice attached to the other end.

A rare moment to sip an average cup of glorious tea and a few long seconds to breathe in its healing vapors.

A simple, extraordinary day. The calm before more calm before her storm.

I had seen her before this day. In fact, I saw her everywhere. In sad blondes lingering over late lunches at the café down the block, joggers running close behind in the park early in the morning while my daughter slept at home, the shadows standing in the bathroom seen only through a mirror powdered with condensation.

There was a strange disappointment after every realization. But as I wiped her away with my hand and stared at my empty reflection, I also felt relief. Before my sister stopped returning my calls, we would talk about it often. This blending of disappointment and relief. Kyla needed an ending.

I needed a beginning.

I drank my tea slowly and lazily flipped catalog pages as Maggie watched and rocked in the next room. A cool breeze scattered my hair, sending a chill where every strand fell. A stranger of nature rustling it playfully and walking away like an affectionate lover or a comfortable parent.

The house was nice. Ceilings that seemed very far away, strong mahogany furniture in every room minus the kitchen, appliances that obviously had never seen use before my arrival. But it was all very temporary.

Rebecca's.

I creaked across the floors as well, pouring hot water from the kettle over a tea bag I was still willing to revive. I didn't waste the good in anything anymore, and when the cup was filled to the brim, I journeyed back to the table and resumed my catalog-flipping. Though I had no need for fleece jackets or wool gloves.

"Auntie Spencer!"

The name echoed from the walls and touched that faraway ceiling like bells in a cathedral. This was no longer sanctuary.

This was it.

"Maggie…"

That voice.

The screen door opened. Why hadn't the front door been closed? Maggie must've gotten too hot and propped her collection of books in front of the heavy wood like always. It explained the clarity of the paint conversation. It explained the intensity of the breeze. I was surprised at the consistent. Amazed at the constancy. How could she be here on a day that seemed so average? Do people pay for their sins in the sunshine or regret in the rain?

"You're here!" Maggie giggled, as though she had been waiting on a playmate for months. You're never enough for children. They always need more than you, even if they never get it.

"I am. I'm here. It's been too long, sweetheart."

The tea cup rattled in my shaking hand, and I rested it quietly on the table.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's in there."

I could see the scene in my head. Maggie pointing towards the kitchen, Spencer nodding and sighing the way she used to when she was anticipating. Tiny, eager eyes following her as she stepped towards the doorway before finally returning to the screen.

Playmate forgotten already.

My perspective was quite different. Piercing blue eyes met mine with a calmness that surprised and scared me. She said nothing, simply pulling out a chair and sitting down beside me as though we were old friends and she was to make no excuse about being late for tea. Friends don't bother with such pointless tension.

"Sp-Spencer," I stumbled, finding not a single location to place my trembling hands.

"Are you expecting company?" she asks, casually. But it's dripping with undertone.

Aiden.

Rebecca.

Both.

"No."

"You don't get any visitors anymore?"

"I haven't gotten any visitors in about two weeks. Before that, it had been a long time."

"A long time?"

"A long time," I nodded.

"How long?"

"Right after Maggie and I left…one visitor…how should I put this? One visitor wore out his usefulness very early on."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. And I didn't mind at all."

"The other visitor…"

"She drank an unfortunate cup of tea," I swallowed, suddenly hardened again.

Spencer smiled slightly, "In that case, remind me to ask for a glass of water instead."

I laughed, but since I knew the truth, it seemed disrespectful, "Is that your way of asking for a glass of water?"

"You're a bit of a rude hostess, and yes…"

I pushed my chair out quickly and crossed the floors once again to open the refrigerator.

"I only have bottles."

"That's still water, isn't it? In a different outfit, but still water."

I nodded again, and brought it to her.

"Speaking of which, Spencer, you look different."

"I am different."

That was the wrong thing for me to say. Of course. Of course she was different. Why would she be the same?

"Sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?"

"For ignoring the obvious."

"I see."

She sipped her water as Maggie giggled in the background.

"She seems happy," Spencer says, fingering the loose label of her bottle.

"I think she is."

"Does she ask for Glen?"

From tiptoeing to loud, deliberate stomping in a moment.

"She used to. I told her he was on a trip, and that she would see him soon. She's a child, so of course, that was all it took."

"Children aren't stupid. Just because she's no longer asking doesn't mean she's no longer wondering."

"Yes, well…"

"How is your sister?"

"Kyla?"

"It wouldn't surprise me, but do you have another sister that I don't know about?"

"No."

"Then yes, Kyla."

"I haven't spoken with her in a long time. But the last time we were on the phone, she was fine. Maybe a bit rattled, but fine."

"Did you ever tell her about Aiden?"

"No."

"Why?"

"It was just something she didn't need to know."

"Where is he?"

"I don't think it's a good idea to make you an accomplice. He's where he is. We'll leave it at that."

"You killed him?"

"Spencer…"

"I'm more curious about the action than the fact that he's dead. I'm more curious about what it feels like."

"It doesn't feel like...it feels like everything else that has to be done in order to move on…laundry, cooking, cleaning the bathroom."

"If I had known it was so easy, maybe I would've killed your sister instead of leaving her handcuffed to a chair in some shitty hotel room, you know? Maybe I should've taken out the garbage."

I stared at her, watched as her face explained the lack of calls from my sister and how she knew where Maggie and I would be. Why hadn't I considered it before?

"So this is it?" I ask, leaning forward on the table, "you're here, you've found us. Now what?"

"I'm a bit lost on the details now, actually. Now I know that you're capable of killing me, which has me a tiny bit worried. My brother is an asshole, and it's not like you're torturing my niece or anything. Maybe I leave you alone here in your house and go back to California. Tell everyone that unfortunately, I'm coming back empty-handed. Something like that, huh? Oh, Ashley, I don't know. I just don't know. I was going to kill you. I was going to kill everyone. But I realized that I'm not capable of it. Besides, I'd say you beat me to it times two."

"I had to do it."

"Why?"

"Aiden…he…he hurt you."

"You hurt me," she said, pointing towards me with a thin, accusatory finger, "you hurt me."

"I know."

"And Rebecca?"

"She was going to take Maggie from me and move to Europe or something."

"How do you know?"

"I heard her talking. I came home from school and she was speaking to someone."

"School?"

I smiled, despite myself, "Culinary school."

"Good for you."

"Thanks," I nodded, though I wasn't sure how sincere she was being. Or why it mattered that she might be proud of me after everything that had transpired.

"You just poisoned her, huh?"

"What?"

"You poisoned Rebecca?"

I stared at her, letting my silence be her answers.

"You really can't stand for people to get in your way, Ashley."

"I wanted my daughter back."

"And we all had to suffer for that. Two people are dead so you could play house."

"The only one I really care about is you. Hurting you is the only thing I regret."

"That's nice."

"I was…I still am, absolutely in love with you. And I know that you can't believe that, but it's true. I miss you so much."

"Show me your room, please."

I was caught off-guard completely.

"What?"

"Let's see. Let's see if you're finally telling me the truth."

She stood up, waiting to be led. And since I was in no position to tell her "no," I hesitantly stood up, and led her down the hallway.

Our shadows like soldiers on harsh white walls.

My trembling hand finally finding purpose in wiping away my tears.

This wouldn't end easily, nor quickly.

It would end with my consequences, on a very simple day.


	12. Chapter 12

_Sorry about the pause there, you guys. It's been an extraordinarily strange and unfortunate few weeks and I appreciate you for being patient with me. Okay, so after this, keep in mind we've got an epilogue coming. Then we're done. I'll give my big "speech" when I post that, so just know until then that I appreciate you guys and your feedback and your enthusiasm about this story._

FUN FACT 1- It takes me about 3 days to write a chapter once I actually get myself to sit down and work and I know where I'm going next with the story. The first time I write about 2-3 pages of dialogue. Then on the next day I come back and write another one and add a few paragraphs of detail. Last day, I come in and do the hard part. All the description work and monologues and everything. THEN I choose the quote.

FUN FACT 2- I love suspenders. I usually write my stories in various pairs of suspenders. Get some.

**CHAPTER 12:**

Main Entry:

1cli·max

Pronunciation:

\klī-maks\

Function:

_noun_

Etymology:

Late Latin, from Greek _klimax,_ literally, ladder, from _klinein_ to lean

Date:circa 1550

1**:** a figure of speech in which a series of phrases or sentences is arranged in ascending order of rhetorical forcefulness 2 a**:** the highest point **:** culmination the _climax_ of a distinguished career b**:** the point of highest dramatic tension or a major turning point in the action (as of a play) c**:** orgasm d**:** menopause 3**:** a relatively stable ecological stage or community especially of plants that is achieved through successful adaptation to an environment ; _especially_ **:** the final stage in ecological succession

**synonyms** see summit

-cli·max·less _adjective_

_-----------------------------  
_

_"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."-Orson Welles_

-----------------------------

"Sit."

"I'm too nervous."

She lay down instead.

The room was painted in the most peculiar shade of yellow. If paint could be described as unenthusiastic, unimpressed, then that's what it was.

Unenthusiastic.

Unimpressed.

The obscure paintings that lined the walls did nothing but create pause between the pressing feelings of under-stimulation and insult to one's basic, common knowledge of acceptable color. How much time should be lost analyzing the effect of unfortunate paint? I scanned the walls slowly, memorizing nothing, doing it all very pointlessly as a means of buying time to remember. Trading these seconds for seconds of a recent past. Impossible, but hopeful deals with God.

I wanted to remember every night after she left. Conjure up every moment of loneliness and betrayal and feel it anew like a first glimpse of rain after drought or your own sincere smile in the mirror after failing to remember happiness. Visualize every second I spent in supposedly self-imposed captivity at the loss of an option to touch her. I watched my arrant tears be absorbed into a pillow I pretended was her shoulder far too many times to pretend I was anything but a reflection of what I felt.

Denied.

I needed to remember everything, so that I spared her not a moment of revenge—even if that revenge came in the form of silence at a time when words would bring her closer to an outcome she both craved and feared.

I knew that feeling well.

"You're nervous?"

"Spencer…"

"Why? Why would you be nervous? What can I do to you, Ashley, that you wouldn't deserve? You'd have to see absolutely every possibility coming at you from a mile away."

She nodded, a dramatic single tear quickly making its way south, "Right."

There was only one window in this room. It sat between two photographs of Maggie and caught intense light from the sun that now shone brightly in quadrants across Ashley's face. For someone able to carry out the workings of an evil plot with false promises and a smile, she looked nothing short of angelic in its unbiased grace.

It made it so much harder for me to remember. So much easier to be honest, despite knowing a façade would give me proper advantage.

"I'm nervous too," I admitted, walking over to sit beside her.

She looked at me, moving her wrists forward against the rope for reasons I'll never know nor care to investigate. Her eyes studied my face as if a single expression could ever begin to display all that I felt. Reflect all that I had learned about what it is to live in a world with those who feel they deserve everything at the cost of everyone.

"Why are you nervous? Because you want to kill me but you can't?"

It was a presumptuous question. A challenge, really. Maybe she was attempting to motivate me as a last act of worthy and personal sacrifice.

But she was wrong.

"Because I want to be with you…but I can't," I said, releasing a sigh I had been holding in since the day she left with Maggie, "and if I could still want that after all of this…then I'm nervous that I may not know who I am or what's good for me. I'm nervous that I could want a lie."

"We weren't a lie."

"That's all that we were."

"That was the only thing that we weren't, Spencer," she says defiantly, obviously still wishing she could move, "I know that there's a significant part of you that hates me. And I know that I deserve to be hated completely by you. I lied about too much. I did too much. I trusted you too little. But you and I...and maybe this isn't even possible, who knows? But you and I existed separately of that."

"You're right. That's not possible."

"Okay," she says, nodding her head again, "okay, that makes sense too."

We sat in silence, hearing only the sound of Maggie's cartoons behind the closed bedroom door. She was the only one in this who couldn't be spared. Either way she lost someone.

Glen.

Ashley.

Both.

"I can't kill you because I have a niece in there who loves you, regardless of your fucked up morals."

"So…"

"So I walk away."

"What?"

There was nothing I could do. There was nothing that could be achieved as long as I was still working within the circumstances that had been created.

It would bring me no release to see her trapped.

No more life to take hers.

No more freedom to see her caged.

She had taken it upon herself to avenge those who aided in my pain and now had to live with the ghosts that could've been mine. She would lose her daughter regardless. Maybe to my brother. Maybe to the lies that would later be questioned.

Her hands were tied.

I leaned over, closer to her than I had been in months. She felt the same and smelled the same, but wasn't. I loosened the rope that kept her at my mercy while I made my final decision. Though she had allowed it without a fight. I ignored her eyes, but could feel them on my neck and face.

"What now?" she whispered, and I could feel her desperate breath as it reached my cheek.

"It's not my job to decide your fate. I don't want it. And a lot of this had been blamed on other people. Aiden. Rebecca. Now it's your turn."

I finished with the rope and placed it beside her.

"My turn."

"It's your turn to decide what happens next. But Ashley, look," I said, still positioned next to her, "she needs him. You don't want her to find out on her own, because you know she will."

"I know."

"There's still a chance that she would understand if you…"

"I know."

"Then I guess there's nothing else to say."

And there wasn't. We were absolutely done. The words that could repair us had yet to be invented and defined. But I could see her actively pursuing them anyway, her mouth opening but sound failing her again and again.

"Will you bring her to visit me?" she finally asked, sitting up and rubbing her right wrist.

"What?"

"Maggie…will you bring her to visit me in prison?"

Prison.

I had used the word so metaphorically over the past few months that its actual physical incarnation had temporarily escaped me.

"Why are you asking me that?"

"She has to be returned to your family. To Glen. And without her…and without you…I don't have any other motivation not to face my consequences. I don't have anything else," she says, the tears falling recklessly now, "I didn't believe you when you told me I could have both. And I have to be punished for not believing you. For believing her, instead and sacrificing you because of it. I have to face this thing, Spencer. It's the only thing I can do for you, I know. And my daughter needs to have a mother who…yeah, made a lot of unforgivable mistakes, but you know…she has to see me paying for them. At least she can have a mother who can do that. I can show her that I love her by giving up my freedom. I don't know. I just know I have to do something and I…"

I didn't mean for it to happen, nor could I comprehend why I needed it to, but I quickly gathered all that was left of Ashley Davies and held her the way she might never again hold her daughter. I held her the way I wished I could on dark nights in motel rooms that had already begun to blend together into one. I held her the way I used to before the truth collapsed on top of me, stilling my naïve dreams for us and leaving me crushed and weakened by the blow of a million tiny truths.

"Of course I will," I said into her shoulder, feeling it shiver beneath my chin, "I'll bring her as often as I can."

"Okay, then I can do it. I really can."

I nodded, still holding her. Still holding on to a moment that would never actually exist for us.

"Of course you can."

She suddenly pulled away from me, thoroughly wiping away her tears, "Can I have a minute with her? I just want to hug her and…"

"I'll be in the kitchen," I quickly answered.

I looked at her once more, remembering the last time she needed a moment alone with my niece. But none of that mattered now. Re-living it only hurt me, and I was finally ready to let go of the hurt, and replace it with the hope that once resided inside.

"Maggie, can you come here a second?" she called, smiling at me.

I stood up and walked towards the door, pausing as she said my name, "Spencer?"

"Yeah."

"It's hard for me to regret all of it…all of what I've done. It led me to you. And I know how selfish this might sound, but…the time I had with you…I loved it. I needed it. And I'm so, so sorry. I wish it could've happened any other way but that way. If I could do it all over again…I would never…"

"I needed it too. It was time for me to grow up, Ashley. This wasn't exactly the way I would've chosen for it to happen, of course. But I think I learned valuable lessons. I learned how to love…and one day—not yet—but one day, I'll learn how to forgive. I learned what I'm capable of, and I learned what I could never be no matter how badly I wanted it."

"You were always too good to stoop to this level."

"You were always too good to have to, Ashley."

She nodded, looking as though she might cry again. But just as the first tear prepared to fall, there was Maggie.

"Yes, Mommy?"

"I need to talk to you for a second, Mags."

I left them, sitting at that table once again. I sipped my water, waiting. The sun was still bright and overwhelming as it made its way through the window and onto my hands that were still for the first time in months. I could hear people living their lives, believing in their own brand of normalcy. I could hear the murmur of Ashley's voice as she spoke to Maggie.

I had waited so long and yet, this moment felt completely new. There was nothing on the other side of that waiting that drove me after all the time spent driving towards this present.

This result.

It was a climax that murmured unimpressively along into another prologue. Unimpressive like yellow paint.

Or another chance you never saw coming.


	13. Chapter 13

Ya'll, thank you so much for the continued support on this story. It's my child, this one. I want every chapter to stand out and I hope that it did. This is short, doesn't answer a lot of questions, and simply is what it is. The last chapter was really the last chapter, anyway. This is simply a bit of icing on the cake. If it leaves you unsatisfied...what are you gonna do? There's no way to end a story like this with all the loose ends tied up. And that was never my intent anyway. I wanted a wild ride and if I achieved that, then I achieved my goal.  
I hope you guys follow me over to "It Slowly Grows." All of my energy will be poured into that one now and then it's over. And it really, really is because I've got my first year of law school coming up and it's no joke. Or so I hear and read.  
Once again, I really appreciate you guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. This has been such a great experience for me, and it's all because of you.  
Let's go...

--------------------

**EPILOGUE:**

She grabbed me hard, and I never saw it coming.

We had redefined and intensified the very nature of "suddenly." Even with tell-tale shadows and the sensation of important presence. Even when the heavy breathing you so acutely hear doesn't match the rhythm of your chest rising and falling below your untrustworthy eye-line.

Still there was "suddenly."

I was blinded to so many parts of her in an effort to ignore most of my own. Though her features as they actually were began to come into view as I witnessed her fight to forgive, then lose. Still, I never saw it coming though it had been coming and coming like an insistent train on a downward track all afternoon.

I was staring at the bottom of a suitcase, allowing the reality of all that I had done and lived to cover and embrace me from rattled head to steady toe. I had lived without freedom for so long that the idea of captivity and imprisonment felt to me like the allusive "home" that Spencer used to talk about at night as we wrapped ourselves warm in my lies and slept in the entitlement I had believed only falsehoods could provide.

I was staring out the window with pointless purpose, because now that something had finally happened—and I knew it would—there was no one else to look for and nothing else to look at besides myself.

It was time for repentance.

She grabbed me like a waiting book from a dusty shelf and read me with her eyes on mine and her hands searching the pages of my body. Maybe it's always the case that a touch we never expect to feel again bears such intense significance. But her hands felt as if they were imprinting themselves in my skin.

And it frightened me.

Me.

The liar.

The murderer.

Her touch frightened me despite my nouns and even my verbs in that present position.

"Ashley, why?" she asked, bringing her forehead to rest on mine, "why would you not want this?"

She moves my hand to her heart. The rhythm is aligned with the breathing I'm so aware of, finally. I envy it. Because it hurts so much to breathe with her so close, waiting for so much.

"I do."

------------------------------

These are the thoughts that keep my mind occupied still. It's as if I can't forget. This one moment in all of our shared moments, this one circumstance in all of my ill-fated circumstances and still, this is the one that remains. It blinks in and out of my limited focus as I watch my daughter walk towards me. She wears a hesitant smile and she looks like she did when I left her.

I can see that as well. A more innocent, youthful version of Maggie, clutching Spencer's hand as she watches me from the street. I can make out her expression through the glass window, confused and frightened as her mother sits cuffed in a police car. It made me feel the way I knew I should.

I felt like a monster.

Now she sits across from me and I feel like a mother. She brings her problems to me. Her complaints. Her first year of college has gone my slowly for her and quickly for me. I try to preserve her as long as I can, anxious to keep her from aging. One day I'll be on the other side and I'll have missed so many years.

So much growth.

So many moments.

"I can't believe we'll only be doing this for another couple of years."

"I know. It's hard to believe, isn't it?"

"It was weird…with Dad."

"He wasn't in very long."

"I know…just a few years. But it was weird, you know? It's still weird, actually."

"Why?"

"Because he's still so quiet. So serious. Like he hasn't forgiven himself yet or something."

"He needs to do that. Regret is hard to live with…and guilt."

"Well, whatever. You want to get the update or what?"

"Let's hear it."

"Okay, so Grandma is good. She says to tell you hello."

"She's hating retirement, I bet."

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Your aunt used to talk about how restless she was."

"She is. She really is."

"How's Arthur?"

"I see him once a week at his apartment. He seems lonely but he swears he's not."

"You should visit him more, maybe?"

"No time. I've got school."

"How is it?"

"School?" she asks, smiling a little bit.

"Of course."

Her smile grew larger, and I could hear her feet tapping excitedly underneath the table, "Good."

"You like someone?"

"Oh my God! I do not."

"You do. Who is it?"

"How'd you know? I hate you. How did you know? Seriously."

"I'm a mom, Mags. It's my job to figure this stuff out."

"Well, whatever. It's nothing. We had one date. He hasn't even called or anything."

"He'll call."

"No he won't."

"He will."

"That's what Aunt Spencer says too."

I swallow hard at this, letting out a sigh as I'm met again with that last conversation. Now it's just letters. Stacks and stacks of letters that I keep hidden under my bed. Her handwriting leans forward, as though she's trying not to forget. She tells me so in a letter from last year, but the handwriting gave her away ages ago.

"How is she?"

"Good. She's the same, you know? I'm house-sitting for her next week. She's finally going to take a vacation."

"Alone?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Who cares? Anyway, she's good."

She makes me swear not to mention the murders. I'm charged with kidnapping only, and my sentence is light considering…

She says it's for Maggie. She deserves a mother. I agree with this, and of course it's easy for me to do so. It's my time to be served.

"She asked me to give you something, though," Maggie says, reaching into her large purse and presenting me with a thick, square envelope.

"Thanks, sweetheart."

I grip the letter in my hand, needing it so badly that even I don't understand the true extent of my loneliness.

But it's more than that. It's more than loneliness. I hold the letter like a missed opportunity. Because that's what it is. That's what she is.

The guard signals the last minute, and I watch as Maggie begins to gather her belongings.

"I'll see you soon then?"

"Yeah, next week."

"Good luck with the boy. He'll come around. And if he doesn't, remember that you're smart and beautiful. Anyone would be lucky to spend time with you. Trust someone who waits all week for it."

"Yeah, well…"

She smiles at me, and we stand to hug. I try not to cry, as I always do. But tears force themselves down my face, as they always do.

"Don't cry," she says into my hair.

She's taller than me now.

"Next time I won't cry. I really won't."

"Yes you will."

"Yes, I will," I admit with a nod, and we both laugh.

She walks away and I clutch the letter as hard as I clutched her, feeling the stiff paper bend beneath my fingers.


End file.
